In the Catholic Church in Hungary 75 years ago, bishops had to recognize communists.

As a result of a forced agreement between the Catholic bishops and the communist government, the Church came under complete state control.

Archbishop József Grősz. Photo: wikipedia.org

In Hungary, even decades after the fall of communism in 1989, the Catholic Church suffers from the consequences of more than 40 years of ideological oppression. The pressure exerted by the party at the harshest stage of Stalinism was enormous. Exactly 75 years ago, the Church experienced an extremely black day.

The course was set by the general secretary of the Communist Party, Mátyás Rákosi, in October 1948: “We end the tactic of lenient treatment of traitors – even if they are wrapped in the robes of priests and cardinals. ” 

Actions soon followed the words. And so on August 30, 1950, 75 years ago, Salinization in Hungary reached a new peak, and the Church survived the black day. By a forced agreement between the Catholic bishops and the communist government, the Church in Hungary came under complete state control for decades.

The destruction of church independence began immediately after the arrival of the Red Army in the fall of 1944. As a result of the land reform following the Soviet model, the Catholic Church lost all its land holdings – five percent of Hungary’s total cultivated area in March 1945. A strict separation of Church and state was enshrined in the constitution of August 1949.

The secret police managed to recruit priests and thus infiltrate church offices. The gradual improvement of this system of informants created an atmosphere of constant mistrust. The internal division was further deepened by the so-called peace movement of priests, which the state forced in August 1950. The movement was supposed to ensure “active cooperation of churches on building socialism “and gradually infiltrated all church structures.

Symbolic figure of resistance

Those who resisted often had to pay a high price for it. Among the mass arrests of priests, religious and lay people, the staged trials of Cardinal József Mindszenty and Archbishop József Grősz stand out. Primate Mindszenty, a symbolic figure in the resistance against Nazism and Communism, was arrested and tortured after a series of closely watched lecture tours to the West in 1948. In February 1949, the communists sentenced him to life imprisonment for treason, espionage, and foreign exchange offenses.

The totalitarian regime actually wanted to silence the critic who said about Hungary: “Lack of truth has become a system. “The Kaloc archbishop and chairman of the episcopal conference, Grősz, opposed the priestly oath of loyalty to the “people’s democracy, which was introduced in 1949. After the arrest of Mindszenty, Grősz was the head of the Hungarian Church. When Grősz was also convicted in 1951, all still vacant bishops took the oath of office.

According to the statement of church historian Gabriel Adriányi, who died in 2024, the entire Stalinist control of the churches was “aimed at their liquidation “. When nationalized in June 1948, the Church lost more than 3,300 schools, resulting in the loss of around 600,000 pupils – nearly half of all educational institutions in the country. Compulsory religious education became voluntary in 1950.

Massive pressure on parents

As a result of the massive pressure on parents, until 1965, only one in seven primary school students participated in religious education, and even only one in 300 in secondary schools. With the introduction of the numerous clausus and state authorization before ordination, the number of future priests was reduced from 1,779 in 1948 to 300. All religious orders and monasteries with more than 11,500 members were abolished.

After the arrest of more than 3,800 religious in the summer of 1950, the bishops had to back down and agreed to negotiations. The tone of the representatives of the communist government was getting sharper. Resistance was futile. 

On August 30, 1950, Archbishop Grősz and Minister of Culture József Darvas signed an agreement that, like the agreement of the Polish bishops four months earlier, was essentially a dictation and adaptation. She obliged the clergy to help in “building socialism “.

As a reward, the state guaranteed, as already stipulated in the 1949 constitution, freedom of religion, and again permitted eight church gymnasiums as a consolation. However, nothing was written about the religious education or fate of the spiritual there. As compensation for the nationalization of church property, only gradually decreasing support was guaranteed to the Church for 18 years. Maladaptive priests were denied a state salary supplement without giving a reason.

Church and Propaganda

Due to its significantly limited scope in the field of worship and religious education, the Church submitted to full state control. In the 1950s, she was even involved in communist propaganda. The collectivization of agriculture and five-year plans were supported in the pastoral letters of the bishops, which were created at the State Office for Churches.

Bishops and vicars general were regularly summoned, interrogated, and humiliated. “A complex and elaborate network of countless regulations, informants and collaborators ensured the maintenance of supervision “, writes historian Adriányi. In reality, however, this agreement helped the Church little: the Catholic Church, the Vatican, and Pope Pius XII. They were increasingly attacked and labeled as “imperialist “on the radio and in the press.

It was only after the regime change that the new Law on Religion in 1990 opened the way to a new regulation of relations between the State and the Church. Cardinal Primate László Paskai and then Prime Minister Miklós Németh canceled the agreement of August 30, 1950.