HIS-Press-Service, 1985 (8. évfolyam, 26-28. szám)
1985-03-01 / 26. szám
HIS Press Service No. 26, March 1985 Page 5 The Development of the Retreats in Hungary In 1928 the Jesuit Order opened Hungary's first house of retreat, known as the "Manresa" in Budapest-Zugliget. In the years from 1928-1948, 1250 retreats, long and short ones, for a total of 57,696 people, were held in this retreat-house - for men only - , run by Jesuits. Hungary's first retreat-house for women, holding up to 100 beds, was opened in 1938 in Pêcel, under the direction of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Népleányok). The statutes of this community are in the spirit of St. Ignatius, and accordingly, the community prefers to place the retreats in the service of its apostolate. In the retreat-house in Pécel it was mostly Jesuit Fathers who ran the retreats; but independent of this the members of the society themselves also ran retreats, especially in the countryside. In April 1945 it was reported in an edition of the "Uj Ember": "Today there are already houses of retreat in all of Hungary's dioceses. Throughout the entire country these light-houses of spiritual life can be found." This was the result of a campaign initiated by the country youth movement KALOT who started up a movement known as the Village-Manresa Movement in the Forties: From six fairly small established retreat-houses and approximately 48 mobile retreat-centres, they attended to the souls of the faithful living in the countryside, mostly under the leadership or at least according to the guiding principles of Jesuits. In 1948, the Benedictines also opened up a small retreat-house in Budapest. The Jesuits had just laid the foundation-stone of a new retreat house in Kispest, and a retreat-house of the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was just about to be opened, when the political events put an end to all further actions in this direction. Organised retreats were forbidden, it was only permitted for priests to take part in closed retreats which they consequently did in Pannonhalma for the most part. EVALUATION The Head of the house of retreat, László Koroncz sums up the assessment of the work done by the retreat-house which has now been functioning for 10 months in the following way: Altogether, 1803 people took part in 58 retreats, (1202 women and 601 men) and out of these, 70% of the women and 50% of the men were pensioners. The age-span of the participants corresponded, for the most part, to that of the Church attenders; the young people thus were poorly represented. According to the Head of the retreat-house, the individual dioceses have not fully exploited the possibilities open to them, i.e. they did not always achieve the maximum
