Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)
The Parish Church of St. Ladislas, 1929
tinián Serédi administered benediction, i.e. blessing with holy water, for the greater glory of God, to the church building of the parish named for the former Törökőr fields of Budapest as early as 28 October 1928. A church made of brick or with a structure of reinforced concrete can only be consecrated, which involves anointment with chrism, or holy oil, if there are 12 stone crosses installed in its walls, and if the principal posts of the main entrance are made of quarry stone. These are then anointed by the bishop when he consecrates the building. The new church was built to designs by Gyula Petrovácz (1872—1952), an architect who gave political expression to his architectural anti-Modernism as a member of Károly Wolf’s Party of the Conservative Christian Community. Petrovácz's work was assessed by Miklós Horváth in 1946. As Horváth says, this was the only ecclesiastical building of all the historicist churches in Budapest built in "the spirit of the new Romanticism" conceived in the style of "the basilicas of the ancient Christians.” According to blueprints kept in the Hungarian Museum of Architecture, Ernő Foerk was employed as Petrovácz's co-designer. Due to the simplicity of the three-aisled, flat-roofed, basilica construction carried by a reinforced concrete structure, and closed with the quarter-circle of the domed apse, the building is indeed evocative of an "ancient Christian” style. The overall layout, the flush closure of the aisles and the spatial focus on the chancel with the altar—described as "Christo-centrism” in contemporary nomenclature—also enhances the same effect. Decades ago, a mural by Ernő Jeges (1942) depicting the adoration of the saint still decorated the wall of the apse; today, even Antal Megyer-Mayer’s Hungarian Art Nouveau altars survive in fragments only. On the gable of the brick-walled building featuring a side-tower on its front there is a mosaic by Imre Zsellér showing the saint heroically practising the virtues of a hermit. The motto of St. Theresa reads Tout est GrÁce (Grace is all.) The Parish Church of St. Ladislas, 1929 No. i Béke tér (Magdolnaváros, Magdalen Town), District XIII "So he decided that he ihall go to Jerusalem, and there die, if need be, for Chriit, who ii the emanation of God’ó glory and the likenedi of Hii eaence." (The Legend of St. Ladislas) The parish was established in 1919 and the foundation stone of its church was laid on 2 December 1928 by Cardinal Serédi in the presence of the papal nuncio.
