Hungary has said it wishes to become a hub for supporting persecuted Christians and called on others to offer tangible assistance to that community. During a conference in Budapest on the issue of Christian persecution, human resources State Secretary Bence Rétvári pointed out that more Christians are persecuted today than under the rule of the emperor Nero. Noting that religious leaders in the Middle East have repeatedly called on western democracies to provide humanitarian aid to Christians and to assist them in remaining in their home countries, Rétvári called on conference participants to work to meet that call. Meanwhile, Tamás Török of Hungary’s state secretariat for providing help to persecuted Christians told the conference that even as the European Union was affected by the violent fall-out of events in the Middle East, it had not developed a unified approach to combat persecution, prompting Hungary to act unilaterally in establishing the secretariat to coordinate Hungary’s own measures with the foreign ministry, churches, civil groups, the UN, the International Criminal Court and the European Parliament in this area.