HIS-Press-Service, 1977 (2. évfolyam, 5-8. szám)
1977-06-01 / 7. szám
HIS Press Service, June 1977 Page 2 the highest level, which was held to help promote the rights and just interests of the Church and her members and which showed an openness to the realities of the situation and gave recognition to the interests and field of activity of the State, would demonstrate its validity on the practical level and find confirmation in future experiences. "The aim of this dialogue," he said, "is to secure the unity of all factors of social life in an atmosphere of true religious peace and to strengthen the loyal cooperation which is of ever greater value to the national community." The Holy See and Hungary's Church will continue to the best of their efforts to promote the path of dialogue, the Pope stressed, in order to do their part in securing the results already achieved and help promote progress in the hope of achieving further goals. THE BACKGROUND Are the Eastern European Countries Looking for New Approaches in Church-State Relations? Both the intensive activity in Hungarian church politics in the past years which was aimed at regulating the Church-State relationship and now this new act at the highest level, namely the audience of János Kádár with the Pope, have caught the attention of foreign observers and led to conjectures which give this visit of the Hungarian Communist Party head with the Pope a significance that goes beyond the scope of Hungarian church politics. Direct Aspects for Moscow This is not the first time that a Pope has received a leading figure of one of the Eastern Communist countries. One need only think of the visit of Chruschtschow's son-in-law Adschubej to Pope John XXIII, or of the formal visits paid to Pope Paul VI by Tito, Gromyko, Nikolaj Podgorny and, most recently of all, György Lázár, the Prime Minister of the Hungarian Communist government. Nevertheless, Kádár's audience signified the first time that a visit was paid to the Pope by a Communist Party head who did not hold an official state position. One can be quite certain that this Vatican visit of the First Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party did not come about without the expressed consent of Moscow. Alone the problems caused by the so-called Euro-Communism give Moscow good reason for wishing to give an exemplary demonstration of the possibility that exists for good relations between the Church and a Communist state loyal to Moscow. It is well known that the Euro-Communist parties are saddled with a serious handicap in
