Mr Orbán highlighted that in Veszprém they were re-consecrating not only a building, “but we are returning to the foundation stone of our own past, our history.”
To this day, the walls of Saint Michael’s Cathedral contain the building stones of the cathedral founded by Blessed Gisela, the Prime Minister pointed out.
Mr Orbán stressed that Saint Stephen’s choice of Christianity was not only a change of religions, but a historical determination and a personal decision.
He quoted a saying used in Queen Gisela’s place of birth to this day, “leave the church in the village.” It is used as a warning not to exaggerate or get carried away, but its original meaning may be that we must never hand over the responsibility that “the divine laws entrusted to the church built in the village,” he indicated.
Meaning that “we must not allow anyone to take away the compass that Christianity has held in its hands for two thousand years,” the Prime Minister said.
Mr Orbán recalled that today in Europe many harmful and many perhaps only naïve aspirations sought “to replace that which is old, in order that we ourselves invent and determine the principles of life and moral order we would like to live in, and to push those who represent our ancestors’ way of life and their associations out of the village, or in other words, out of our lives.”
In Hungary in the past fifteen years, they have done the very opposite of this, he pointed out, adding that they have reinforced the communities whose values and form of life have preserved and maintained the Hungarian community.
The Prime Minister said it is good to know and to see that the church has performed its service among us incessantly for a thousand years. This service installed the Veszprém Cathedral, too, into the middle of the city, “and elevated it above the city.”
Regarding the Veszprém Cathedral, he said these walls, towers and stones saw the glory when the power of faith recruited armies that were capable of defending the nation, and saw devastation when foreign powers ravaged them. They witnessed the power of faith keeping the Hungarian community alive, and the times when “messages of good tidings dissolved in the noise of the world.”
They saw that in the fifties, thirty priests of the Veszprém diocese were imprisoned and interned, in fact, even the bishop was interned, they witnessed the dissolution of religious orders and the nationalisation of the social institutions of the church, and they also witnessed the closing down of the seminary in 1951.
They further witnessed the agents of the state church bureau appointed to the episcopal hall, “the infamous moustachioed bishops” place the church under political control, he said.
The oppression of the nation goes hand in hand with the subjugation of the church, we must never forget that, Mr Orbán pointed out.
Anti-church and anti-Christian forces must not be taken lightly, the Prime Minister said, highlighting that “the cranky lunatics agitating against our churches, today’s violent Lenin’s Boys, the flustered Bolshevik troops shouting at priests” have re-emerged in Hungarian politics. We must stand against them and stand up for ourselves before it is too late, he added.
The Prime Minister stressed that they would not give the harassment and persecution of Christian communities a square inch of space in Hungary; instead, they would continue the church- and nation-building work.
He said in the past decade, almost four thousand churches have been refurbished throughout the Carpathian Basin, and more than two hundred new Christian churches have been built. We will not abandon this path, he observed.
He added that today in the once Christian Europe, different winds were blowing, the continent which had once had a culture of church-building had become “a civilisation of church destroyers.”
In Germany in 25 years, 550 churches have been vacated, 160 of these have been demolished, and only 50 new ones have been built in their place. Last year in France, 1,700 churches remained closed throughout the year, and some fifty thousand buildings are facing the threat of demolition or sale. The situation is similar in the Netherlands and Britain, too, the Prime Minister listed.
Central Europe keeps holding on, it gets back up on its feet time and time again because the people here still know that “if Christianity is lost, so is the country.”
There are things which we must not joke about with, which we must not risk, which we cannot experiment with: migration, the education of children, families, national sovereignty, the Prime Minister summed up.
Based on the results of the Saturday elections in the Czech Republic, Mr Orbán concluded that the Czechs “have kept their wits about them.” He added: we remember Saint Adalbert, János Hunyadi’s Czech fighters and that on the battlefield of Mohács five hundred years ago Czech soldiers were also there to defend Hungary and Europe against the conquering armies.
The Prime Minister also expressed joy about the overwhelming election victory of the Czech patriots. “We are relieved to see that we can count on another comrade-in-arms in the Brussels battles,” he said.
At the end of his speech, Mr Orbán thanked the people of Veszprém and offered the government’s alliance with all their major future projects, saying that “Hungary has always benefited from all the many successes of the people of Veszprém.”
