József Mindszenty

The native form of this personal name is Mindszenty József. This article uses the Western name order.

Statue of Cardinal Mindszenty, New Brunswick, NJ

The Venerable József Mindszenty (March 29, 1892—May 6, 1975) was a cardinal and the head of the Roman Catholic Church as the Archbishop of Esztergom in Hungary. He became known as a steadfast supporter of Church freedom and opponent of communism and the brutal Stalinist persecution in his country. As a result, he was tortured and given a life sentence in a 1949 show trial that generated worldwide condemnation, including a United Nations resolution. Freed in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, he was granted political asylum and lived in the U.S. embassy in Budapest for 15 years. He was finally allowed to leave the country in 1971. He died in exile in 1975 in Vienna, Austria.

Early life and career

Mindszenty was born József Pehm on March 29, 1892, in Csehimindszent, Austria-Hungary. His father was a magistrate.

He became a priest on June 12, 1915. In 1917, the first of his books, Motherhood, was published. He was arrested by the republican Mihály Károlyi government on February 9, 1919 and held until the fall of the communist Béla Kun government on July 31.

He adopted his new name—part of his home village's name—in 1941. He also joined the Independent Smallholders' Party in this period, in opposition to the Fascist Arrow Cross Party.^{[citation needed]} On March 25, 1944, he was consecrated bishop of Veszprém, which is a distinguished post because the town traditionally belonged to the queens of Hungary. He permitted his church to be used for a thanksgiving mass for the deportation of the local Jews to Auschwitz. His only objection was that Te Deum should not be used. He was arrested on November 27, 1944, for his opposition to the Arrow Cross government's plan to quarter soldiers in parts of his official palace. In April 1945, with the collapse of the Arrow Cross power, he was released from house arrest at a church in Sopron. ^[1]

Church leader and opposition to communism

On September 15, 1945, he was appointed Primate of Hungary and Archbishop of Esztergom (the seat of the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary). On February 18, 1946, he was elevated to cardinal by Pope Pius XII. His titular church in Rome was Santo Stefano Rotondo. In 1948, religious orders were banned by the government.

On December 26, 1948, Mindszenty was arrested again and accused of treason, conspiracy, and offences against the newly formed communist government's laws. Shortly before his arrest, he wrote a note to the effect that he had not been involved in any conspiracy, and any confession he might make would be the result of duress. While he was imprisoned by the Communist government, he confessed to working with Americans against the state of Hungary.

Among other forced confessions, Mindszenty admitted that he had orchestrated the theft of Hungary's crown jewels (including the Crown of Saint Stephen) with the explicit purpose of crowning Otto von Habsburg emperor of Eastern Europe. He admitted that he had schemed to remove the Communist government; that he had planned a Third World War, and that, once this war was won by the Americans, he himself would assume political power in Hungary.^[2]

On February 3, 1949, his trial began. On February 8, Mindszenty was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason against the Communist government. The government released a book "Documents on the Mindszenty Case" containing evidences against Mindszenty including his confession. Mindszenty walked into court and openly confessed to the crimes he was accused of. On February 12, 1949, Pope Pius XII announced the excommunication of all persons involved in the trial and conviction of Mindszenty. In his apostolic letter, Acerrimo Moerore, he publicly condemned the jailing of the cardinal and stated he was being mistreated. Mindszenty later said he had been hit with rubber truncheons until he agreed to confess.

On October 30, 1956, during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Mindszenty was released from prison and he returned to Budapest the next day. On November 2, he praised the insurgents. The following day he made a radio broadcast in favour of recent anti-communist developments. The self-declared "worker-peasant government" of János Kádár later used his speech as a "proof" of dominant clerical-imperialist influence in the October 1956 events to show that the uprising was counter-revolutionary in nature.

Confinement at the US embassy

U.S. Embassy in Budapest

When the Soviet Union invaded Hungary on November 4 to restore the overthrown communist government, Mindszenty sought Imre Nagy's advice, and was granted political asylum at the United States embassy in Budapest. Mindszenty lived there for the next 15 years, unable to leave the grounds.

György Aczél, the communist official in charge of all cultural and religious matters in Hungary, felt increasingly uncomfortable about the situation in late 1960s when Mindszenty fell seriously ill and rumor spread about the priest's impending "martyrdom". Yet, Aczél failed to convince János Kádár that freeing Mindszenty would create valuable confusion in the Vatican and allow the state to better control the remaining clergy.

Mindszenty's presence was also an inconvenience to the US government because the Budapest embassy was already overcrowded, his quarters took valuable floor space, and a permit for expansion could not be obtained from the Hungarian authorities unless he was expelled.

Exile

Mindszenty's death mask in the Mindszenty Museum, Esztergom

Styles of József Cardinal Mindszenty
Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	Esztergom

Eventually, Pope Paul VI offered a compromise: declaring Mindszenty a "victim of history" (instead of communism) and annulling the excommunication imposed on his political opponents. The Hungarian government allowed Mindszenty to leave the country on September 28, 1971. Beginning on October 23, 1971, he lived in Vienna, Austria, as he took offence at Rome's advice that he should resign from the primacy of the Hungarian Roman Catholic Church in exchange for a Vatican-backed uncensored publication of his memoirs. Although most bishops retire at or near age 75, Mindszenty continuously denied rumors of his resignation and he was not canonically required to step down at the time.

In December 1973, at the age of 81, Mindszenty was stripped of his titles by the Pope, who declared the Hungarian cardinal's seat officially vacated, but refused to fill the seat while Mindszenty was still alive. Mindszenty died on May 6, 1975, at the age of 83, in exile in Vienna. In early 1976, the Pope made Bishop László Lékai the primate of Hungary, ending a long struggle with the communist government. Lékai turned out to be quite cordial towards the Kádár government.

In 1991, his remains were repatriated to Esztergom by the newly democratically elected government and buried in the basilica there.

Legacy

Mindszenty is widely admired in modern-day Hungary, and no one denies his courage in opposing the Nazi and Nyilas gangs, or his resolve in confinement, which is often compared to that of Lajos Kossuth in exile. However, Mindszenty is seen as the archetypal figure of "clerical reaction" by his communist critics. He continued to use the feudal title of prince-primate (hercegprímás) even after the use of nobility, peerage and royal titulature were entirely outlawed by the 1946 parliament (under Soviet influence). His aristocratic attitudes and continued claims for compensation against nationalization of vast range of pre-World War II church-owned farmlands alienated large groups of the Hungarian society, which was composed of a majority of agricultural workers at the time.^[3]

He did not believe in a separation of church and state and fought fiercely against secularization of church-run primary and secondary schools.

The Mindszenty Museum in Esztergom

His beatification and eventual canonization has been on the agenda of Hungarian Catholic church ever since communism fell in 1989. The pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI is seen by many analysts as an excellent opportunity, as the Pope is equally traditional in his views on church and secular matters and has commented favourably on Mindszenty's calling.

The Mindszenty Museum in Esztergom is dedicated to the life of the churchman. A commemorative statue of Cardinal Mindszenty stands at St. Ladislaus Church in New Brunswick, New Jersey, U.S.. He is also remembered in Chile, with a memorial in the same park (Parque Bustamante) in which a monument to the martyrs of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution stands.

Film

Memorial to Mindszenty in Santiago, Chile

Mindszenty's life and battle against the Soviet domination of Hungary and communism were the subject of the 1950 film Guilty of Treason which was, in part, based on his personal papers, and starred Charles Bickford as the cardinal.

The 1955 film The Prisoner is loosely based on Mindszenty's imprisonment with Alec Guinness playing a fictionalized version of the Cardinal.^[4]

See also

• List of Eastern Bloc defectors
• Alojzije Stepinac
• Óscar Romero
• John Fisher

References

1. ^ http://www.freeweb.hu/eszmelet/34/baloghs34.html
2. ^ Streatfield, Dominic. (2007) Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control. New York, NY: Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 031232572X
3. ^ Chip Berlet, "Cardinal Mindszenty: Heroic Anti-Communist or Anti-Semite or Both?" The St. Louis Journalism Review, Vol. 16, No. 105, April 1988.
4. ^ IMDB

External links

• The Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation

Catholic Church titles
Preceded by Jusztinián György Serédi	Archbishop of Esztergom 2 October 1945–19 December 1973	Succeeded by László Lékai

Persondata
Name	Mindszenty, Jozsef
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1892
Place of birth
Date of death	1975
Place of death