Former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s Democratic Coalition party is contesting national elections on 8th April with a handful of populist themes that will likely mobilize his base and perhaps attract some traditional opposition voters disillusioned with the socialists. Based on a speech he gave on Saturday at a Budapest hotel, and on the narrative of his campaign to date, three […]
A petition spearheaded by a Catholic bishop, a prominent musician, two television personalities and a Catholic blogger has attracted more than 5,000 signatures in just one day. The petition was launched by Bishop Miklós Beer, musician András Hajós, TV host Alinda Veiszer, television personality Gábor Takács Gundel and the founder of the Christian Szemlélek blog, István Gégény. In this petition, the […]
Most Californians do not know that the picturesque city of San Juan Capistrano, south of Los Angeles close to the Pacific Coast, has an intriguing Hungarian connection. The town is a popular tourist destination with palm trees, lots of sunshine and gorgeous architecture. If you visit Budapest, and walk around in the Castle district you’ll bump into a small square, […]
Sometimes in Canada we have a tendency to see ourselves as exceptional when it comes to our model of multiculturalism and diversity. Yet societies throughout the world have found ways to handle diversity for centuries. In late June, I spent a week travelling along the Black Sea Coast, visiting Romania and Bulgaria. I was fortunate to have a private guide […]
Zsolt Bayer, the prominent publicist, the co-founder of the ruling Fidesz party and close confidant of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, announced that Hungary must exit the European Union. He went further, calling the EU “a scalding pigsty.” Mr. Bayer was speaking to the local television station of the northeastern town of Miskolc, where he said: “If the EU continues along […]
One would be hard pressed to find a western government more openly and intrinsically opposed to the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church than that of Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. When we speak about Catholic social teachings, we refer to seven key principles, fundamentally dating back to Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical of 1891, entitled On the Condition of Labour (Rerum Novarum) […]
Miklós Beer is the Bishop of the Diocese of Vác, extending from Nógrád county bordering Slovakia down towards Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county in southeastern Hungary. Some 640,000 Hungarians (or 57% of the population) of this area identify as Roman Catholic in the towns covered by the diocese, which includes regions that are among the poorest in Hungary. Bishop Beer gave a fascinating interview […]
Zoltán Németh is a Roman Catholic priest in the town of Körmend (population: 12,400), located directly on the border with Austria. Fr. Németh did what would not raise a single eyebrow in western Europe, nor in North America: he simply offered basic help to a handful of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, giving them shelter in a building owned by his […]
Hungarian, British, Filipino, Jamaican, German, Slovak, Indo-Caribbean, Syrian and Muslim–these are some of the peoples and cultures that you can explore on November 26th, 2016, at the International Day Festival hosted by St. Joseph’s Parish. The Roman Catholic community is celebrating its 160th anniversary this fall and while it was originally built on parishioners of primarily Irish and French background, […]
We are entering the final stretch of Hungary’s anti-migrant referendum, scheduled for October 2nd. A new poll by Republikon suggests that 48% of the electorate is certain to cast a ballot, while an additional 23% say that they will likely vote. These polling results suggest that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will get exactly what he is looking for: a massive […]
