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We would like to thank Auxiliary Bishop John O’Hara for his cooperation, which made it possible for more than 100 American-Hungarians to have a celebratory Mass in St. Stephen of Hungary Church commemorating the Revolution and Freedom Fight of 1956 that freed Cardinal Jozef Mindszenty from Communist imprisonment. This year is also the 40th anniversary of the death of the Servant of God Jozef Cardinal Mindszenty.
It is an ancient, generally established tradition among Catholics that a person honored after his death as a saint by the Catholic community would be proclaimed a saint by common acclamation of the people in the main village square or in the church that he/she attended. This is what was done at the end of the Hungarian Mass at St. Stephen of Hungary Church in Yorkville.
The participants remembered that we walk in the footsteps of a holy man, who 41 years ago celebrated Mass in this church and blessed the faithful of New York. We guard the memory of Cardinal Mindszenty, who for 16 years lived at the American embassy in Budapest, where he was granted political asylum. On that account, the entire Archdiocese of New York may regard him as their own saint, and we hope that all of us Catholic faithful and Church dignitaries of New York may pay him the respect due him as the saint of two nations, a Servant of God who had been tortured in prison.
Imre Beke Sr.
Kerhonkson
The writer is chairman of the American Hungarian Catholic Society.
