What Really Happened at the Eucharistic Congress in Budapest?
It has been one week since the papal plane landed on Hungarian soil and brought Pope Francis to Budapest, where he celebrated the concluding Mass of the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress.
If one looked at the coverage of the Congress, however, many of the eyes of the mainstream press were fixed on the meeting of the “liberal” Pope Francis and the “illiberal” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
This resulted in an unfortunate politicization of a wonderful event that gave hope to hundreds of thousands of pilgrims in the heart of a secularized European continent.
As always, the anti-Christian mainstream media and its promoters were very creative in finding ways to divert attention from what actually occurred during the Congress and between the leader of the Catholic Church and the leader of a new “European Christian political bloc.” They had several reasons for this manipulation as neither event fits into their desired narrative. Let’s see why.
‘Goulash Communism’
This year was, in fact, the second time Hungary hosted a Eucharistic Congress. The first one was held on the eve of the Second World War in 1938. The 34th Eucharist Congress in Budapest would be one of the last public expressions of European Christendom before the beginning of a very dark era of persecution, suppression and hardship. Little did the planners know, that the memory of those days would serve as hope for the faithful suffering under the Nazi occupation or the brutal Soviet communist oppression afterward.
Historic figures like Cardinal József Mindszenty, reinforced by the experience of the Congress of 1938, have since become part of the country’s common memory. Thus, the organizers of the most recent Congress, which had had to be postponed one year due to the pandemic, knew that a very serious legacy was at stake. Not only did this Congress represent an enormous opportunity to strengthen the faithful, it also could prove that Catholicism does not only have a shining past, but a hopeful future in Hungary. Those who had the fortune to be there at the candlelight procession on Sept. 11 or the papal Mass the day after, had no doubt that the Congress, as an American pilgrim observed, “was thus a statement about the rebirth of Hungary and the persistence of faith.”
This “rebirth” is vital as, despite the current political rhetoric, religiosity in Hungary is not significantly better than in the West. There are several reasons behind this reality. The first lies in Hungary’s experience with “Goulash Communism.”
After Hungarian freedom fighters revolted against communism in 1956, the Hungarian regime changed tactics. Instead of the harsh oppression it utilized before, the “reformed” regime aimed for compromise in exchange for economic benefits.
Due to the relatively wide range of traveling and economic opportunities, and the relaxing of open ideological oppression, Hungary became known as the “happiest barrack” in the Soviet bloc. This led to a tragic paradox: In countries like Poland or Romania, where the political systems continued to persecute Christianity, the resistance grew, while in Hungary, the seemingly more tolerant “Goulash Communism” weakened resistance to the regime and political system.
Although the Church went through a revival after the regime change, the Church did not keep up with the newest challenges of the world, due to the 45 years of separation behind the Iron Curtain. Most importantly, she failed to realize that her future was in the cities rather in the old structure of the rural parish system.
This year’s Eucharistic Congress, however, marked a notable step in this realization process as everyone could see that although a many of the participants came from rural areas, the organization and the most dynamic (also youngest) communities to promote and execute the event were urban.
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