Fraternity-Testvériség, 1997 (75. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1997-04-01 / 2. szám
TESTVÉRISÉG A bout 120 kilometers south of Budapest on the Danube lies the historic city of Kalocsa. For 1000 years it has been an important center for the Catholic Church in Hungary. Anasztáz, the first bishop, came to King Steven as Papal Legate bearing the crown of Hungary and the authorization for the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary. He built the first cathedral in Kalocsa and started increasing both the importance and the wealth of the church in the area. Through the years the Church grew enormously in wealth and power. As so many centers of art and education, it was destroyed by the Turks when they conquered Hungary. However, when the Turks were expelled the Church regained its importance in Kalocsa and all its properties were rebuilt during the time of the Hapsburgs. The present cathedral is the fourth edifice to stand on the present site. It was built in the Baroque style and its interior is a brilliant sight in white, gold and pink. The organ, which was installed in 1878 and redone in 1992 and 1987, has 4668 pipes and 3 electronic keyboards. After the Turks were expelled the Church regained its lands. At one time the archdiocese owned 150,000 hectares of land around Kalocsa. The income from these lands supported education in the town from elementary schools through university and seminaries and also supported the local hospital. This was big business and required good management. As a result of this need, the managers of the farms met in Kalocsa once a week to report to the church administrator. These reports contained information about property rights, food, goods and land use. All the reports have been carefully kept and meticulously filed in the agricultural files kept by the archdiocese. And, there is a listing of all the people who lived on the farms from the time that Maria Theresa of Austria repopulated the area with Swabian Germans. What a gold mine of information for anyone interested in tracing his family in that area! There are also 860 maps of the area covering the period from 1754-1942. Barbara A. Porter Barbara spent a month in Kalocsa working with the tourism foundation. She was a volunteer executive with the International Executive Service Corps. While there, she learned a great deal about the town and surrounding area. She hopes that tourism will develop in Kalocsa, which, being the center of the second archdiocese in Hungary, has been deliberately overlooked during the past 45 years by the communist regime. kalFcsa THE HEARTOF HUNGARY
