Galloping Gypsy
  • Home
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • About
  • Music
    • Repertoire
  • Events
  • Links
  • Gallery
  • Blog 2

This Hungarian Abbey Has a Heart, Shelters Refugees

11/9/2015

0 Comments

 
I have a personal fondness for the Archabbey at Pannonhalma, Hungary, which I first visited in 1995. As the property had been confiscated in the early 1950s and only recently restored to the Benedictine Order, it had clearly suffered material neglect, even though the old communist government had allowed monks to continue living there.

I returned in 2011 to find it in much better condition: the winery was in full swing, lavender fields were rendering bath and beauty products, its chapels and main church had been restored. And it had received a new addition: Otto von Habsburg, the last crown prince of Austria-Hungary. Part of him, that is. Following centuries-old Habsburg tradition of burying the heart separate from the rest of the body, he had willed to have his buried here (the rest of his body lies in Vienna’s Capuchin Crypt). Mainly because monks from the abbey followed his family into exile at the end of WWI to educate the young heir apparent. Another reason was to show that Austria and Hungary both belong to a united Europe.

Indeed, the abbey, founded in 996, is an integral part of European civilization, having run a boarding school almost continually since that date. Despite several temporary closings over the centuries, and one in 1948-1950, it even became a rare example of a Catholic school allowed to operate in the former East Bloc.

Now, the monastery has shown the charitable side of its Christian mission. Last Saturday, September 5, Pannonhalma took in an as-yet undisclosed number of Syrian families, along with two unaccompanied minors. Volunteers escorting the group along the highway had brought them there, where they were sheltered in the gym.

This action was in apparent contradiction to a widely publicized, and criticized, suggestion by Hungary’s Cardinal Péter Erdő that housing undocumented refugees could be a violation of the country’s laws against human trafficking or smuggling (the Hungarian Helsinki Commission denies this claim). Vienna’s Catholic archdiocese, by contrast, is preparing to take in 1000 refugees.

Although the Benedictines of Pannonhalma were approached rather than making an offer, they performed this charitable work before Pope Benedict’s call on Sunday for all European Catholic parishes to take in at least one family. “We cannot leave anyone outside because doing so would contradict the Gospel,” Archabbot Asztrik Várszegi has been quoted as saying. The monastery also protected a considerable number of Jews during WWII.

Click here for the news story.

 

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014

    Musical & Literary Wanderings of a Galloping Gypsy

    Mark Eliot Nuckols is a travel writer from Silver Beach Virginia who is also a musician and teacher.

    Categories

    All
    Austria
    Birthday
    Central Europe
    Czechoslovakia
    Czech Republic
    Folk Music
    Francis Ferdinand
    Grand Budapest Hotel
    Hungary
    Martin
    Mozart
    Music
    Pécs
    Prague
    Requiem
    Sarajevo
    Slovakia
    St. Cecilia
    Stefan Zweig
    The World Of Yesterday
    Vienna
    World War I

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly