Members of the Hungarian Reformed Church community are familiar with the path that leads to the survival and preservation of the Hungarian community in the Carpathian Basin, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated on Wednesday in Budapest.
The Prime Minister said at the Wednesday evening service held in the Kálvin Square Reformed Church on the occasion of the metropolitan meeting of the General Convent: “we have been handed down the task of finding the path” which leads to the survival and preservation of the Hungarian community in the Carpathian Basin.
"Members of the Hungarian Reform Church community are familiar with that path. Our history testifies to that”, Mr. Orbán stressed in his welcome speech.
The Prime Minister said: "we are living in treacherous times that are testing all our strength”. In his words, while Europe is today preoccupied with the waves of migration and the Greek financial disputes, guns are crackling in the eastern part of Ukraine as we speak, and a number of Hungarian families in Transcarpathia are living hand to mouth, while the men of their community still fear having to fight in a war in which they do not see their own interests.
"In Transylvania, a war is being waged against members of the Hungarian Reformed Church which invokes the darkest periods of communism”, the Prime Minister added.
Mr. Orbán takes the view that the question which has been asked repeatedly so many times is now gaining a very serious meaning: what kind of a future awaits the Hungarian nation in the Carpathian Basin? The answer is the same as it was in centuries past: to survive and to preserve, he said, and then continued: “to survive and to preserve amidst wars, the outbreak of which we have very little to do with, and by which we have nothing to gain but everything to lose”.
Mr. Orbán reiterated that Protestant preachers in the 16th century walked the villages of the provinces under Turkish occupation with the mission to preserve those living there “as Christian and as Hungarian”.
This is how it could come about that what we lost at Mohács in military and political terms was regained and reconquered in a cultural and spiritual sense by Geneva, Sárospatak and Debrecen, he said, and added: and this is how it could have further come about that in 2009 – remembering the duty which members of the Hungarian Reformed Church community of today and tomorrow owe their nation – the “fragmented parts of the Hungarian Reformed Church scattered around different countries” passed a common constitution.
"What God created as a single whole cannot be torn apart either by Trianon or by communism", Prime Minister Orbán stated.
The Prime Minister said that six years ago therefore “the bonds and clamps of five centuries were fortified, with the aid of which members of the Hungarian Reformed Church – in fulfilment of their historic mission – unite the Hungarian communities of Transylvania and Transdanubia, Slovakia and Dunamellék, the parts of Hungary beyond the River Tisza and Transcarpathia, and regions of Hungary on this side of the Tisza and Vojvodina, and Hungarians living overseas".
Mr. Orbán stated: “Hungary’s responsible leaders today are asking you to help the nation as you have done in the past five hundred years ".
"Let us jointly stand up for Transcarpathia where there is a looming social disaster, and let us jointly stand up for Transylvania", the Prime Minister called upon his audience, who also expressed his gratitude for the efforts, in consequence of which thousands of Hungarian families in trouble in Transcarpathia were given help.
"Let us be and continue to remain one another’s closest allies in work and service so that we may fight with united force for the survival and preservation of the Hungarian community in the Carpathian Basin", Mr. Orbán said in closing his speech.
The service held on the first day of the two-day metropolitan meeting of the General Convent – the common representative body of Reformed Churches in the Carpathian Basin – was conducted by Bishop István Szabó, President of the Synod of the Reformed Church in Hungary.
(Prime Minister's Office)
