Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

The Parish Church of Magna Dominica Hungarorum, Regnum Marianum, 1931

■ The dome in an archive photo. 1930/31

On the day the Soviet troops moved in, 4 November 1956, a poem carried by the Catholic weekly Új Ember (New Man) pays homage to the toppling of Stalin's statue on 23 October. Its closing lines make an unequivocal allusion to the church standing on the edge of the City Park, whose demolition was "necessitated'' by the widening of Dózsa György (Aréna) út, the creation of Felvonulási tér (Parade Square) and the erection of the Stalin statue originally unveiled on 16 December 1951. (The statue used to stand in the axis of Városligeti fasor, the church in that of Damjanich utca.)

Restored after the crushing of the revolution and later given a red-marble facing, the statue's pedestal-cum-rostrum continued to fulfil its function on the occasion of May Day parades until the change of political regime. This was where the state and party leaders greeted the "workers of Budapest” marching by.

In the spring of 1920, a Church Construction Committee was established within months of the dictates of the peace treaty of Versailles, which detached two-thirds of the country’s territory and more than half its population, including Hungary’s national minorities. At the time the Regnum Marianum Devotional Association was chaired by Ottokár Prohászka, Bishop of Székesfehérvár, while its chaplain was Lajos Shvoy. The competition for the design of a "guardian

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