Cistercian Martyrs in Hungary (2005/06/01)

The decades of Russian occupation and communist rule in Hungary became in fact an age of martyrs, particularly the worst years of it, the time period between 1945 and 1970. Hundreds of priests and nuns, thousands of lay people were thrown into prisons, dozens of them were killed outright, and the life of most of them was thwarted by the mental and physical tortures and exposure to prison life. The book I’m holding in my hands is just one of a multi-volume series in which the stories of the priests and religious are collected who were incarcerated or killed by the communist power that was certainly an “evil empire.”

The volume I’m holding in my hands contains (in Hungarian) the Calvary of 264 members of six religious orders, including the Cistercians of Zirc. It’s an inspiring reading because of the descriptions of the tremendous heroism that these religious demonstrated, but also a difficult reading because of the accounts of unspeakable sufferings and pain.

In 1950, the Congregation of Zirc had roughly 200 members; while all of them suffered under communism because of losing all property of Zirc, all five schools, then (after the liquidation of religious orders) even their home and their monastic way of life, as civilians working in menial jobs, living in constant danger, being followed, observed, reported on by government agents, yes, while all 200 Cistercians suffered, the extraordinary plight of 49 of them is narrated in this volume. It’s close to home: the accounts include the stories of four members of our Irving community: Fr. Leonard Barta who was imprisoned in 1953, was freed from prison by the

1956 Revolution, left Hungary immediately, and, after moving from place to place in Europe for years, immigrated in the U.S.A. and lived in this monastery from 1959 until his death in 1979; Fr. Anianus Lekai, brother of Fr. Louis Lekai, who spent six years in prison (convicted as a “Vatican spy”), being liberated from prison in 1956, left the country, lived in this Abbey but later returned to the lay status and died 3 or 4 years ago in England; Fr. Thomas Feher who was imprisoned in 1947 for three months and when, after being released, he heard the rumor of a planned second arrest, he fled to Austria, came to the U.S., became one of the founding Fathers and the first novice master of the monastery, and lived here since its beginnings until he died in 1980, and Fr. Pascal Kis-Horvath who even now still has terrible nightmares about the tortures and prison years suffered fifty years ago. I remember those years, that’s when I was an underground novice and later junior monk: we recited daily Psalm 120 and a special prayer for those Fathers and Brothers who were at that particular time in prison, listing in the prayer their names one by one; we had to constantly update the list as new Cistercians were arrested or someone was released.

The Hungarian communists learned from the past; they remembered how the whole world hated them because of the persecution of the Church in Spain, in Mexico, in the Soviet Union. After WW II they tried to persecute the Church so that it would not look as persecution. They gave the Church a limited freedom as propaganda for the western world, and they arrested members of the clergy (and many lay people) not because of their involvement in the Church life but as common criminals, spies, conspirators, - even perverts (the most devilish way of robbing one of honor: the stain of suspicion stays no matter what). They were particularly careful not to make any martyrs. (Maybe they knew Tertullian’s saying.) If a priest had a terminal illness, he was quickly released so that he would not die in the prison. (Several Cistercians left the prison very ill and died shortly after their release.) Very few priests got death sentence. (There were some; cf. Paulist Fathers.)

While all 49 Cistercians listed in this book (and many others whose name is not even mentioned in it) should be considered martyrs, today I talk only about three Fathers who actually died by the hands of the communists.

The first priest is Clement Papp (“pap” in Hungarian means “priest”). Fr. Clement was born in 1900, from 1939 until 1948 (when the communists took away all Catholic schools) he was teaching Latin and History in the Cistercian school of Baja. From 1948 he worked as a pastor in a small village, one of the Cistercian parishes. Around 1950 a group of young people of Baja formed an underground organization which, eventually, included some 200 young men, among them some former students of the Cistercians. In 1951 one of them contacted Fr. Clement with a minor request which, trying to stay away from this political underground group, Fr. Clement refused. By 1952 the secret police learned about this “conspiracy” arrested 30 members of the group (among them a younger brother of our Fr. Balthazar). Under torture, the boy who contacted Fr. Clement, admitted that he spoke to the priest, Fr. Clement (also Fr. Leonard) was arrested and convicted for 15 of prison. (For the communists, it looked “good” if they were able to produce priest leaders of such a political conspiracy.) Fr. Clement, in 1953, died in the prison – nobody knows how; the official cause of death was heart attack. He was 53 years old.

Fr. Sixtus Debreczeni came from a family of five siblings, - all four boys chose to become a priest. Just two years older than our Fr. Benedict, he studied in Paris and Bologna and became a language teacher of French and Italian. In 1947 he was also village pastor in a Cistercian parish. It happened that the church’s music director, because of extreme negligence and poor performance, was fired. He provoked members of the local communist youth organization, and on one Sunday, as the priest, after the Mass, was leaving the church, a group of communist youth attacked and mobbed him so that Fr. Sixtus suffered serious injuries. In 1948 when the Catholic schools were taken away, he was appointed as director of the Cistercian church in Eger. Within a short time he did a miracle in the parish community. He organized retreats, parish picnics, religious instruction, care of the elderly, he personally cared for many poor families, carrying on his back their fire wood, shoveling snow in front of old people’s houses so that they would not be penalized. In 1950 when the religious orders were suppressed, Fr. Sixtus was not allowed to work as a priest. He lived in a shack, worked as a gardener. He tutored private students in Italian, French, and Latin, and organized a secret network of religious instruction. He lived under police surveillance, was forbidden to leave the city. During the fall of 1953 at two occasion, he barely escaped an arranged “accident” when a car tried to run over him. The third attempt was successful: on Feb. 21, 1954, a car killed him on a city street as he was walking with his bicycle. The car was government-owned military vehicle. The official report declared the incident as an unfortunate “accident” committed by a careless “drunk” driver with several drunk girls with him in the car. The local authorities were afraid of a mass demonstration and did not allow a funeral in Eger. Fr. Sixtus was buried in secret in another town. He lived 37 years.

The youngest victim was born in the same year as Fr. Melchior: 1931. His parents had three sons, all three became priests, two of them Cistercians, the third a diocesan priest, - only because the Cistercians were by that time already suppressed. His two brothers are still active as priests. The parents were truly a saintly couple, they should be canonized. He entered Cistercian Order in 1950, a couple of months before the suppression but there was no written record of his Cistercian identity, so, after the suppression he was admitted to a diocesan seminary. In secret, he took his religious profession, and was a Cistercian. He was ordained priest in 1955 by the bishop of his hometown and was appointed assistant pastor in a village very close to the Austrian border (and so, very heavily supervised by border guards and secret police). Five villages belonged to the parish; the priest had to travel first on a bicycle, later on on a motorcycle. The pastor, his “boss” was a very good, dedicated priest and the two of them were working together brilliantly. Fr. Anastasius within a short time became very popular among the parishioners. But good priestly work always provoked opposition from the part of local communist leaders. Provocations happened very early after the young priest’s arrival like the one when some people threw logs in front of his motorcycle to cause him to crash as he was going to another village belonging to his parish. Communist party officials warned the bishop that Fr. Anastasius’ life is in danger but when the bishop wanted to transfer him, the young Cistercian wanted to stay. The entries in his diary show that he had been a saintly priest who completely surrendered his life to God and was ready for anything.

On December 14, 1957, Saturday, the pastor went to hear confessions to one of the villages and spent the night there so that he could celebrate there the Sunday morning Mass. Fr. Anastasius remained alone in the rectory. After midnight, the priest heard that someone is knocking on his window. It was a 16 year old young man whom he knew well and the boy said, his uncle is dying, and he needs to be provided with the sacraments right away. Fr. Anastasius got dressed quickly, packed the items that were needed: holy water, oil, book, and the Blessed Sacrament, and the two took off in the middle of the night, walking. It was a very dark, moonless night. Shortly after that the boy excused himself that he has to go home, his mother is waiting for him. The priest knew where the uncle lived so he said okay and continued to walk alone. The walking trail went through a wooded area and then through an open field. On the open field, just a few hundred feet from the rectory, the priest was attacked by a group of people. Next morning someone noticed close to the trail a bunch of footprints, most of them men’s dress shoe prints but there were among them also prints of women’s high heeled dress shoes. Farmers did not wear dress shoes, those who left the prints must have come from the city. Evidently this was the spot where the first attack took place. That Saturday night at the county seat the local police force had a big party. Already in the afternoon, the local grave digger saw several men “in leather jackets” in that area and he wondered who these men were. (Only members of the police force were wearing leather jackets in those times.) It seems Father managed to slip out of the attackers’ hands and continued to walk (or run) toward (what he thought) the dying man’s house but after a couple of hundred yards footprints showed again signs of struggle. It seems such attacks and slippings away in the dark happened a few more times because the last group of foot prints were found already at the first house of the next village where the priest was headed. In the house people heard shouting: “Don’t, don’t, please don’t do it!” “My God, help me!” “Watch out, he’s running that way!” “Help, help! They’re killing me!” The priest’s only weapon was a large flashlight; it seems the attackers took it from him because on his body several head injuries were found seemingly done with an object like that. It was also here that they knocked off his glasses that were found later. And it was here that his body received most of the 32 stabbing wounds. His wounds also indicate that with his left hand he was protecting the Blessed Sacrament while with the other hand he tried to fight off his attackers. It seems that after he collapsed, they pulled him on the other side of the road. When everything became very quiet, the family came out of the house and found the injured priest. He was still alive, covered with blood. In the dark they did not recognize that it was their priest. The father of the family on a bicycle went in the town to notify the police and call a doctor. He could not find anyone at the police station; everyone was gone. When the doctor arrived on the scene, the priest was already dead. Later on, the pastor found the Blessed Sacrament on the body intact.

The official investigation declared that the murder was committed by one person, that the motive of the crime was robbery. The boy who was used to call the priest became the “fall-guy”, was convicted for murder, but after three years he was released from the prison.

During the years immediately following the 1956 revolution all together seven Catholic priests were murdered under similar, very suspicious circumstances.

Two little notes have to be added to this account.

His former classmates remembered later that when Fr. Anastasius was in the 3rd grade, the class performed a drama, they dramatized the story of the young martyr, St. Tarcisius, the patron saint of altar servers, who gave his life protecting the Blessed Sacrament he was carrying to a sick person. John, the future Fr. Anastasius, demanded in an unreasonably aggressive way that he should play the main character, so that he received the role. Later in his life the play became reality.

Fr. Anastasius kept the reproduction of a painting in his room as his favorite picture. It showed a priest walking in the dark of the night carrying the Blessed Sacrament to a dying person with an old man in front of him with a lamp showing the way.

Premonitions for the destiny of a saint? The cause for his beatification is in progress. He was 26 years old when he died.

Let’s be proud of our heroes, let’s try to imitate their fidelity to their vocation.

Rev. Julius Leloczky, O.Cist