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

The Chapel of Hungary's Saints, 1996

The Chapel of Hungary’s Saints, 1996

Egyetemváros (University Town), Lágymányos, District XI

"God, before you do we kneel down / Cover our iim with your goodness ai a gown/Look at the souls oh your saints bom in Hungary /Remember their pure iouli, their unblemished chastity” (Canticle on Hungary’s saints, 1695)

The building planned as the pavilion of the Papal state in the World Exposition of 1996, an event cancelled in the end, was to have assumed a sacral role—that of a university chapel—as its permanent function in accordance with routine Vatican procedure. When the expo was called off, the Archdiocese of Eszter- gom-Budapest decided to proceed with the project all the same. The motto of the exposition—Communication for a Better World—meant, in the interpretation of the builders, the millennial "communication’’ between God and man, the depository and mediator of which was the Church. That sort of communication fosters community (communio). Ferenc Török (b. 1936), architect of many an important ecclesiastical edifice in Hungary, and Mihály Balázs designed their building in such a way that it would "symbolise the ideals expressed in matter through structure and vaulting from Christ’s cross and sacrifice, from

■ View of the church from the west