HIS-Press-Service, 1981 (6. évfolyam, 19-21. szám)
1981-07-01 / 20. szám
HIS Press Service No.20, July 1981 Page 5 The books bequeathed to the library by deceased residents provide for its continual expansion. Some of Hungary's dioceses (Esztergom, 10 persons; Szombathely, 20 persons; and recently also Kalocsa, 6 persons) have provided retirement quarters for their priests. A Church-financed retirement home for Church employees and mothers of priests has existed in Pécs since 1961. This home, the Prohászka Home, is much too small, however, to accept all such persons who request entrance. Cardinal Lékai has therefore worked out an agreement with the State Office for Church Affairs which allows applicants who are unable to be accepted in the Prohászka Home to be given a place in the retirement home in Csákvár. The latter will retain its State-supported status. EVALUATION After the war, Hungary's political leadership declared that the social and charitable care of the country's population had now become the obligation of the State, and that religious order members were no longer needed for such services. The disbandement of Hungary's religious orders in 1950 deprived the country's Catholic charitable institutions of the basis of their existance. As a result, these institutions either closed down, or were taken over by the State. The numerous social and charitable institutions run by the country's Protestant Churches, however, remained unaffected by the disbandment of the religious orders, and thus most of them continue their work under Church auspices to the present day. This situation played a role in the decision to build the Pope John XXIII Retirement Home. There was the desire to offer the Catholic laity the possibility of spending their years of retirement in a religious milieu. One retirement home alone, however, is completely incapable of meeting the needs of 6,5 million faithful. This home, however, provides the Church with an opportunity to study the problems and needs involved in the Church's care of the aged. The development of this project by the Church prompted the question (as was also the case at the time of the construction of the Albert Schweitzer Retirement Home by the Protestant Church) of whether the disproportionally large financial obligation thereby placed upon already strained Church financial resources - which are also desperately needed for pastoral activities - was actually justified. The Church sees a justification for the assumption of this severe financial burden in the wish of many aged, religiously-orientated persons to spend their years of retirement in a religious milieu, as well as in the expectations on the part of the
