HIS-Press-Service, 1985 (8. évfolyam, 26-28. szám)

1985-03-01 / 26. szám

HIS Press Service No.26, March 1985

Page 2

chapel is on the third floor. The rooms on the ground floor of the former villa were converted into a dining-room, kitchen and household-rooms, fusing with the extension into a harmonious unit.

Financing

That the retreat-house could be built at all is thanks to the generosity of the German and Austrian Bishops Conferences who took on 2/3 of the building costs amounting to 18 million Forints. The remaining third was raised by the Hungarian Church, complying with Cardinal Lékai's suggestion that all the priests in the country in the past three years took on ten mass intentions a year. The Cardinal mentioned this fact in an interview given in April 1980 to the Hungarian section of Vatican Radio in the following words: "Our members of the faithful have always eagerly shown their readiness to make sacrifices for the realization

of this or that Church project___ We priests, in our turn, would like to show

our gratitude by contributing to the realization of a long-cherished wish of theirs

Apart from these contributions, subsidies came from other sources too; the building costs had, however, risen to 26 mill ion Forints. Among others, contributions came from Pope John Paul II, from the central office of the Jesuit Order in Rome, from the Provinces of the German Jesuits’Assistance, from Hungarian Jesuits living outside Hungary, but also from countless members of the faithful.

The furnishing of the house was financed out of private contributions, and here, a rather original idea was thought up: the furnishings of the individual rooms came from donations in return for which the donator was allowed to choose a name for the room which was furnished by him. Cardinal Lékai, for example, had a room furnished and named after Cardinal Péter Pázmány. Until March 1983 21 parishes in Budapest and 7 country parishes sent contributions for this purpose, as did all the bishops in the country, the cathedral capital of Esztergom, the St.Stephen' Society, the Ecclesia Association and the National Hungarian St.Cecilia Society etc. The members of the editorial staff of the newspaper, "Új Ember" financed the furnishing of the chapel. The rooms named after St. Benedict, St. Francis and St. Clare were propably furnished by the corresponding orders still permitted in Hungary, while it can be assumed that the furnishings of the rooms named after St. Bernard, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Joseph of Calasanz, St.

Vincent de Paul, Maria Magdalene Eppinger- the foundress of the Congregation of the Daughters of the Divine Saviour - as well asFr. Ferenc X. Bfró S.J., the founder of the Society of the Sacred Heart, were financed by the corresponding orders, which are not permitted in Hungary.

The personnel-, running- and maintenance-costs present no small problem; the contributions of the participants in the course cannot cover them. Altogether there