Petőcz Kálmán (szerk.): National Populism and Slovak - Hungarian Relations in Slovakia 2006-2009 (Somorja, 2009)
Miroslav Kocúr: For God and Nation: Christian National Populism
For God and Nation: Christian National Populism during it. It was a KBS declaration regarding the Vatican document on the holocaust titled “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah”. Toward the end, the document features a paragraph in which the KBS offers apology to those who have been harmed by its insensitivity in the past. The paragraph reads: “In this time of penance inspired by Pope John Paul II, we, Slovak Catholic bishops associated in the Conference of Slovak Bishops ask our Jewish brothers and sisters for forgiveness and call on all Catholic believers as well as all Christians and people of good will to join us and overcome all prejudices. We sincerely believe that the act of apology to the Jewish nation in terms of ‘moral and religious memory’ shall be understood as the act of repentance, as the act of love for the Crucified, which is our peace.”11 Unfortunately, practical measures and public statements by Ján Sokol, Ján Chryzostom Korec and some other representatives of the Roman Catholic Church who regularly revere Jozef Tiso in public thoroughly ignore the text of this KBS document. Moreover, some officials of the Roman Catholic Church in Slovakia repeatedly attempt to relativize and play light of the period of the wartime Slovak State. Consequently, this disparaging negatively affects the public’s sensitivity to displays of ethnic intolerance or other forms of intolerance. New Trnava ARcInbishop ancI Ihís ReíIectíon on Tiso's AttítucIes In June 2009, the news service of the SITA news agency12 published an article that was subsequently reprinted by all relevant Slovak dailies. The article presented new Tmava Archbishop Róbert Bezák’s views of Tiso’s actions from the time of his presidency as well as his reactions to public statements presented by Ján Sokol who preceded him in office. To Bezák, forming an independent Slovak state in 1939 was a historically logical unravelling of political development in fonner Czechoslovakia. But he said what followed was equally important. He pointed out the first registered Nazi transport dispatched from Slovakia in March 1942 that brought 990 Jewish women into the Auschwitz concentration camp. “That is worse. 990 people, women, are not easily lost. A question to me is whether in 1942 a person that happens to be a Catholic priest should not react - perhaps even by saying: I shall abdicate. Whenever anyone around me is wronged, I am wronged myself. It is not something that would not concern me,” the new Archbishop emphasized. Bezák also criticized statements his predecessor Ján Sokol made about experiencing affluence during the Slovak State. “I ask how a six year-old 227
