József Mindszenty

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Cardinal József Mindszenty, 1974
Statue of József Cardinal Mindszenty in Zalaegerszeg (Photo: 2007)
Signature

József Cardinal Mindszenty (* as József Pehm on March 29, 1892 in Csehimindszent , Eisenburg County , Austria-Hungary ; † May 6, 1975 in Vienna ) was a Hungarian Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Esztergom ( dt. Gran ) and the last Prince Primate of Hungary . He was imprisoned several times for his stand against injustice and after 1945 was a symbol of the resistance against communism in Hungary.

Life

priest

József Mindszenty was born as József Pehm, the first of six children of the farmer János Pehm and his wife Borbála Kovács. His name "Mindszenty", which was later adopted, was composed of the Hungarian roots of mind or minden (in German: "all", "all-encompassing") and szent (in German: "holy").

He attended elementary school in his place of birth and from 1903 the Premonstratensian grammar school in Szombathely . There he was also a member of the Catholic Youth and prefect of a youth congregation. In 1911 he entered the local seminary . After studying theology , he was ordained a priest on June 12, 1915 . He was initially a chaplain in Felsőpaty ( Rábapaty parish ) and wrote his first book there, “The Mother”.

From January 26, 1917 he was a religion teacher at the grammar school in Zalaegerszeg and also worked as an editor for the weekly newspaper of Vas County .

After the end of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy , Mihály Károlyi came to power in October 1918 and proclaimed the Republic of Hungary on November 16. Mindszenty criticized the left-wing government in newspaper articles and in early 1919 took over the leadership of the newly founded Christian Party in the election campaign. Therefore, he was arrested on February 9, 1919 and held in the episcopal palace in Szombathely . He remained in custody after Béla Kun came to power on March 21, and was not released until May 15. Since he was banned from speaking in public, he initially lived again at his place of birth.

After the end of the Soviet Republic , he returned to Zalaegerszeg on August 2nd and was appointed pastor there on October 1st. He had schools built, new churches built and founded religious and ecclesiastical associations. Although he was a member of the county and city council, he turned down further political activities in order to concentrate on pastoral care. In 1924 he was appointed titular abbot , in 1937 papal house prelate .

In 1941, under the impression that the Axis powers entered the war, the Reich Administrator Horthy turned away from neutrality and the suicide of Prime Minister Pál Teleki, who had failed in his efforts to achieve peace , he renounced his family name Pehm because of its German root and named himself Mindszenty after his place of birth .

bishop

Pope Pius XII appointed him on March 4, 1944 on the proposal of the Nuncio Angelo Rotta and in agreement with the Hungarian government to the Bishop of Veszprém . On March 25th he received the episcopal ordination through Cardinal Serédi . Mindszenty sold parts of the large ecclesiastical property and had 34 new parishes and 11 Catholic schools built in his diocese.

Miklós Horthy , who for revisionist reasons had increasingly joined National Socialist Germany since the 1930s , recognized in 1943 that the war was lost for Germany and made contact with the Allies . As a result, German troops occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944 in Operation Margarethe and forced Döme Sztójay to be appointed head of government. Together with the Hungarian bishops, Mindszenty protested that the new government had Jews locked up in ghettos and then deported to the extermination camps.

Horthy, who had announced an armistice with the Soviet Union on October 15 after the Red Army marched into eastern Hungary , had to resign and a National Socialist government led by Arrow Cross member Ferenc Szálasi came to power. Together with the West Hungarian bishops Vilmos Apor and Lajos Shvoy as well as the Archabbot of Pannonhalma Chrysostomus Kelemen, Mindszenty wrote on October 31st to urge the government “not to let West Hungary become a battlefield for the retreat”. He was therefore arrested on November 26th along with 26 priests and theology students. On December 23, he was transferred to the Sopronkőhida prison near Sopron and on December 31 to Sopron. After the Red Army had also conquered western Hungary, he was able to return to Veszprém on April 20, 1945 .

Studies of materialistic philosophy and negative experiences that Hungary had made with the Soviet republic and Russia with communism made him an opponent of this worldview even earlier, as the aim of which he saw the spread of godlessness. He refused to make compromises with communism because they were only useful to it. In addition, there were attacks by the Soviet occupation soldiers , who shot two bishops who were friends with him, János Mikes and Vilmos Apor , when they tried to protect women from rape .

The previous Hungarian primate Serédi died on March 29th. On behalf of József Grősz , the chairman of the Hungarian Bishops' Conference, Mindszenty wrote a pastoral letter that was published on May 24th, but in which the atrocities of the Soviet troops were not directly mentioned.

Primate of Hungary

Coat of arms of the Cardinal Archbishop and Primate Hungaricae

Pope Pius XII appointed him Archbishop of Esztergom on September 15, 1945 , the introduction to this office took place on October 7th. On February 18, 1946 he was accepted into the College of Cardinals as a cardinal priest with the titular church of Santo Stefano al Monte Celio . In the past, the Archbishop of Esztergom, as the Primate of Hungary, was the first authority after the king. Since Hungary was still a monarchy , Mindszenty saw it as his duty to demand that the rulers comply with the constitutional provisions, and after his appointment he telegraphed to the government: "The country's first civil dignitary is at his homeland".

Conflicts soon arose with the Communist Party of the Hungarian Working People , which tried to take power in Hungary. During his trips abroad, the archbishop repeatedly pointed out the oppression of the church by the communists and tried to get relief supplies from exiled Hungary in the USA , which were hindered by the Hungarian communists. He accused the Russian occupation forces of obstructing reconstruction in the country. On October 17th he published a pastoral letter in which he protested against the expulsion of the Germans from Hungary . In 1946 he raised his voice against the expulsion of Hungarians from Slovakia .

He was also against Hungary becoming the Republic of Hungary on February 1, 1946 through a parliamentary resolution, but without a referendum . Since then he has been attacked more and more often in the media as an enemy of progress; the regime organized public demonstrations against him. The “Laws for the Protection of the State Order and the Republic” passed on March 12th made it possible to prosecute oppositionists. Catholic schools were raided as early as April because the government accused the teachers of these schools as enemies of the state . By mobilizing the population, however, the nationalization of private schools could still be prevented.

When a Russian soldier was shot dead by a comrade in an argument in the summer of 1946, a member of the Catholic Youth Association was accused of murder. Mindszenty could not prevent the government from taking this as an opportunity to dissolve the church associations and abolish state religious education.

The situation for the Catholic Church worsened after the new parliamentary elections on August 31, 1947, which brought the left-wing bloc a share of the vote of 61 percent. (See also: Prehistory of the Hungarian People's Uprising .) In April 1948 the government planned to nationalize private schools. Mindszenty opposed this in pastoral letters dated May 11 and May 23. Nevertheless, the law was passed by parliament on June 16. 4885 schools, of which 3148 belonged to the Catholic Church, became the property of the state. The cardinal informed Western journalists about these events. Because he refused to recognize the communist government, demonstrations against him were organized again. On November 19, his secretary András Zakar was arrested. Mindszenty had to reckon with a similar fate and noted in writing that he would never abdicate voluntarily while in captivity or make a “confession” of any wrongdoing. On December 23, the archbishop's palace was searched for incriminating material, and on December 26 he was arrested.

Show trial, detention and asylum

According to his own admission, he was tortured for weeks and drugged into signing confessions of guilt, which he marked with the suffix cf ("under duress"). From February 3 to 5, 1949, a show trial took place before a people's court , in which he was charged with overthrowing, espionage against Hungary and foreign exchange offenses. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment on February 8, and with him six other defendants - including Pál Esterházy - received long prison terms. The verdict became final on July 6th. He was then imprisoned in various institutions, but did not apply for amnesty because he wanted full rehabilitation.

The Hungarian popular uprising began on October 23, 1956 , and the cardinal was freed from prison in Felsőpetény near Vác on October 30 and brought to Budapest in a triumphal procession the following day . The liberation was carried out by soldiers from the Rétság barracks under the leadership of Major Antal Pálinkás-Pallavicini , who was head of the regiment at the time (he was executed after the bloody suppression of the uprising on December 10, 1957). On the way to Budapest the cardinal stayed in the barracks in Rétság. (For the 60th anniversary of the events, a statue of the cardinal was erected in Rétság.) When he arrived in Budapest, he and other bishops decided on November 2nd to remove the peace priests from leading positions.

In a radio address on November 3, he supported the new government under Imre Nagy . As the Red Army marched into Budapest and put down the uprising, he fled to the US embassy in Budapest the following day . There he was given asylum , which Imre Nagy had applied for a few days earlier. On behalf of Popes John XXIII. and Paul VI. The then Vienna Archbishop , Cardinal Franz König , visited him regularly in the embassy from 1963.

When the United States wanted an end to the Cold War and the Holy See also sought rapprochement with the communist governments in Eastern Europe, the Mindszenty case became an obstacle to relaxation. Mindszenty had previously turned down the Pope's offer to leave Hungary and take up a curial office in Rome. From June 25, 1971, Prelate József Zágon negotiated with him on behalf of the Vatican about an exit under the following conditions:

  1. Mindszenty was to remain a primate with an apostolic administrator to administer his diocese.
  2. He was supposed to leave Hungary without making a statement or a circular.
  3. He should not make any statements abroad which might disturb the relations of the Apostolic See with the Hungarian government.
  4. He should keep his memoirs secret and bequeath them to the Holy See in his will.

The cardinal expressed concern about the last two points in particular. But since President Richard Nixon also advised to leave, Mindszenty realized that he was not wanted in the American embassy and bowed to the Pope's request. On September 28th, after mediation by Cardinal König, the Austrian Nuncio Opilio Rossi took him by car from Budapest to Vienna. From there Mindszenty flew to Rome, where he concelebrated with the Pope at the opening of the Synod of Bishops .

In exile

On October 23, 1971, he went into exile in Vienna, where he lived in the Hungarian Pazmaneum seminary in the 9th district on Boltzmanngasse , which is right next to the US embassy in Vienna . Since the Vatican did not comply with his wish to appoint his own auxiliary bishops for the Hungarians abroad, he traveled from May 1972 to the Hungarians living in different continents and also preached on these occasions. Against this, the Hungarian government protested, which had agreed in negotiations with the Vatican in June 1971 that the cardinal should abstain from all political, pastoral and literary activities. Mindszenty had not been informed of these terms and would likely not have agreed to them.

In July 1973 he presented Pope Paul VI. his memoirs, which expressed concerns about publication, but raised no objection to it. This is why they appeared in 1974 under the German title Memoirs , in which clear criticism of the Vatican's too lax policy towards communism can be read.

The grave of József Cardinal Mindszenty in Mariazell (Styria)
The grave of Cardinal József Mindszenty in the crypt of Esztergom Cathedral

In order to further normalize relations with communist Hungary, the Pope asked him to resign as Archbishop of Esztergom on November 1, 1973. Mindszenty refused. Nevertheless, the bishopric was declared vacant on December 18th. The deposed Archbishop asked for this decision to be revoked on January 7, 1974, but was removed from office on February 5 for pastoral reasons .

After his death on May 6, 1975 in the hospital of the Barmherzigen Brüder in Vienna , he was buried on May 15 in the pilgrimage church of Mariazell ( Styria ) next to the grave of his predecessor, Primate János Kritel Scitovszky , who died in 1866 . According to his will , his remains should not be transferred to Esztergom until “the star of Moscow godlessness descended from the heavens of Mary and St. Stephans falls ”. This took place after the Soviet occupation forces withdrew on May 4, 1991. The following Latin inscription was placed on his epitaph : "vita humiliavit - mors exaltavit", German: "Life has humiliated [him], death has exalted [him]" .

He was posthumously rehabilitated and the sentences against him were overturned.

József Mindszenty was the last Archbishop of Gran who was allowed to bear the title of Prince Primate of Hungary (Princeps Primas Hungariae).

Appreciation

His pastoral services are undisputed and widely recognized. His uncompromising attitude towards communism is judged differently; for many he was too stubborn and intransigent. He deserves admiration for his fearless demeanor against injustices, for which he sat in prison for many years and almost was executed. He is therefore seen by many as a martyr .

His impeachment in 1973/74, which hit him hard personally, was criticized by many inside and outside the Catholic Church. Up until the political turning point in 1989, he was viewed and portrayed in Hungary alongside Imre Nagy as a prime example of the counter-revolutionary .

Commemoration

In 2020, the foundation stone for the Mindszentyaneum was laid in Zalaegerszeg , a museum that is supposed to depict his life and his wikeness.

Beatification process

In 1993, Michael von Habsburg-Lothringen initiated the beatification process as President of the Mindscenty Foundation .

Pope Francis awarded him the heroic degree of virtue on February 12, 2019 .

Fonts

  • Az édesanya (German: The mother). 2nd edition Zalaegerszeg 1942
  • Padányi Biró Márton püspök élete és kora (German: Life and Work of Bishop Biró Márton Padányi). Zalaegerszeg 1934
  • Esztergom, a primások városa (German: Esztergom, the city of primates). Vienna 1973
  • Memories . 4th edition Propylaea, Frankfurt a. M. 1974, ISBN 3-549-07310-0
  • Napi jegyzetek 1956–1971 (German: diary entries). Vaduz 1979
  • Hirdettem az igét (German: Selected Pastoral Letters and Sermons). Vaduz 1982
  • Legyen meg a te akaratod (German: excerpts from writings and sermons). Budapest 1989

swell

  • "His Eminence file". American Embassy, ​​Budapest, from Embassy archives, 15 (1971) (= Mindszenty bíboros. Az amerikai Nagykövetségen, Követségi Levéltár, 15 (1971) ). Edited by Ádám Somorjai. 2nd Edition. Metem, Budapest 2012, ISBN 9789639662254 ( pdf ).
  • Ádám Somorjai, Tibor Zinner (Ed.): Do Not Forget This Small Honest Nation. Cardinal Mindszenty to 4 US Presidents and State Secretaries 1956–1971 as Conserved in American Archives and Commented by American Diplomats . Xlibris, Bloomington 2013, ISBN 978-1-4797-6859-2 ( preview on Google Books ).
  • Ádám Somorjai, Tibor Zinner (ed.): Correspondence of Cardinal József Mindszenty with the Holy See from the American Legation, 1956–71. Translated into English by Judit Zinner. EOS Verlag, Sank Ottilien 2017, ISBN 978-3-8306-7838-0 .

literature

  • Gabriel Adriányi : The Ostpolitik of the Vatican 1958-1978 towards Hungary. The case of Cardinal Mindszenty . Schäfer, Herne 2003, ISBN 3-933337-29-1 .
  • Anne Applebaum : The Iron Curtain. The oppression of Eastern Europe 1944–1956 . Siedler, Munich 2013.
  • József Közi Horváth: Cardinal Mindszenty. A confessor and martyr of our time . Church in Need - Aid for Eastern Priests, Königstein a. Taunus 1977.
  • Tibor Mészáros: But his family didn't accept him. Cardinal Mindszenty's secretary recalls . Schäfer, Herne 2002, ISBN 3-933337-28-3 .
  • Sigismund Mihalovicz: Mindszenty, Hungary, Europe. A witness report . Badenia, Karlsruhe 1949.
  • Emilio Vasari: The exiled cardinal. Mindscenty's life in exile . Herold, Vienna a. a. 1977, ISBN 3-7008-0133-5 .
  • Josef Vecsey (ed.): Cardinal Mindszenty. Posts on his seventieth birthday . Danube, Munich 1962.
  • (Unnamed author) Cardinal Mindszenty . Source, Feldkirch 1949.
  • Gabriel Adriányi:  MINDSZENTY, József. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 5, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-043-3 , Sp. 1552-1556.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )

Web links

Commons : József Cardinal Mindszenty  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Foundation stone laid for new Mindszenty Museum , News Service Eastern Churches (NÖK), July 9, 2020, accessed on July 13, 2020.
  2. ↑ Visit of Prime Minister Orbán to Vienna ( Memento from March 6, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) on ORF ethnic groups from June 12, 2012, accessed on February 3, 2013.
  3. ^ Exhibition on Cardinal Mindszenty in Vienna on July 9, 2012, accessed on February 3, 2013.
  4. ^ Promulgazione di Decreti della Congregazione delle Cause dei Santi. In: Daily Bulletin. Holy See Press Office, February 13, 2019, accessed February 13, 2019 (Italian).
predecessor Office successor
Jusztinián György Cardinal Serédi OSB Archbishop of Esztergom
1945–1973 		László Cardinal Lékai
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on October 20, 2005 .
personal data
SURNAME Mindszenty, József
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pehm, József
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Esztergom-Budapest
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Csehimindszent , Vas County in western Hungary
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1975
Place of death Vienna