Egyháztörténeti Szemle 18. (2017)

2017 / 4. szám - SUMMARIES IN ENGLISH - Karlinszky Balázs: „Registered”. Personnel of the Veszprém episcopal palace in the mirror of reports in the spring of 1957 - Mikó Zsuzsanna: The activity of the county and episcopal commissioner of the State Office of Church Affairs in Heves county in the 1950s

Summaries in English

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„Registered”. Personnel of the Veszprém episcopal palace in the mirror of reports in the spring of 1957

Karlinszky, Balázs

Bishop Bertalan Sándor Badalik (1949-1957/1965) had been a thorn in the eyes of the state security from the very beginning as a result of his rigorous anti-communist and lack of cooperative attitude towards the regime. Hence, his close colleagues were not only tailed more or less overtly by the so-called moustached-bishops (delegates of the State Office for Church Affairs [ÁEH: Állami Egyházügyi Hivatal]), but other local agents were also ordered to trace the bishop’s activity. The author examines in this paper how report-makers carried out their task in a given situation: to what extent did the state security consider their accounts for their concept of the episcopal personnel in the spring and summer of 1957. Following the 1956 revolution, Badalik took immediate measures to substitute those priests whom he regarded undesirable. His successor, Sándor Károly Klempa made way for clerics cooperating with or being members of the peace movement. Whereas ecclesiastical career of priests with such background was at least unambiguous during Badalik’s episcopacy, from 15 August 1957, the internment of the bishop, exclusively those could achieve higher positions - deaneries, archdeaneries, wealthy municipial or coastal parishes at Lake Balaton - whom the state security approved. This paper establishes that local agents’ report weighed in this practice much less than governmental (i.e. that of the ÁEH) conceptions.

The activity of the county and episcopal commissioner of the State Office of Church Affairs in Heves county in the 1950s

Mikó, Zsuzsanna

The State Office of Church Affairs of Hungary did its best to inspect the countries considered to be ’clerical’ via the county commissioners of state affairs.

In the case of Heves county, an episcopal commissioner was employed by the Primacy in Eger, and a county commissioner of state affairs was employed by the Committee of Heves County. In Heves county the episcopal commissioner was Gusztáv Molnár in 1951, then he was replaced by János Fekete in 1953, then in 1955 Emil Borai was assigned with both the tasks of the episcopal commissioner and the county commissioner.

Emil Borai was the most decisive person from among the county commissioners of the State Office of Church Affairs in Heves county, and the length of his mandate - he was in office from 1952 to 1969 - also marks that he strongly bound to the mission that was selected/granted as his vocation. According to the preserved archival documents, he was very active, and he was assigned with very serious missions by his superiors. However, in the 1950s his problematic cases multiplied, and he received several written reminders from the President of the State Office of Church Affairs.

The reports of the county and episcopal commissioners of the State Office of Church Affairs intended to give a full image of the religious life of