Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)
The Parish Church of St. Francis of Assisi, 1879
shall be heirs of salvation" (Heb. 1.14). The altars of the as yet unfinished church were consecrated by Archbishop László Paskai in the presence of Ferenc Mádl, President of the Republic of Hungary on 17 April 2002. As a designer of churches, the architect aspires after the impossible, since, in the words of God communicated by Isaiah, "heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me ...?" (Isa 66.1). The Parish Church of St. Francis of Assisi, 1879 Bakáts tér, District IX "He entereth ... to pray when the likeness oh Chriit wondrously speaketh unto him and says, 'Francii, go thou and restore my church, because, as thou const see, it lieth in ruins'." (The legend of St. Francis—Legenda aurea, 1263-73) Construction work on this church was begun as early as 1867, the year of the Compromise between Austria and Hungary. However, the process was prolonged due to insufficient funds, and the church was only consecrated on the 24th of St. George’s Month (April) 1879 by Prince Primate János Simor, who had also celebrated the royal coronation ceremony in 1867. The date of consecration was also the 25th wedding anniversary of the royal couple Frances .Joseph I and Queen Elizabeth. The square where the church stands was named in 1874 after the Renaissance prelate Tamás Bakócz (a.k.a. Bakócs or Bakács), builder of the Esztergom chapel. Vilmos Kurtz, who was to become the parish priest here, ran into the renowned archaeologist Flóris Römer, who said, in lieu of greeting him, "So you want to build a church and have no idea about archaeology?” Béla Czobor, the leading art historian of the turn of the century who published the anecdote, believed that the episode must have had something to do with the fact that "of the new churches in our capital the one in Ferencváros ... was the first to be built, without any signs of poor taste, in medieval style". Thus, the designs made by Miklós Ybl (1814-91), that grand master of neo- Renaissance architecture, managed to live up to expectations prevailing in the second third of the 19th century. At the time the "proper thing” to do in architecture was to design in medieval, i.e. Gothic or Romanesque, style. (A significant earlier work by Ybl was the neo-Romantic, four-tower, basilica church in Fót, a small town outside Budapest.) 9
