Christian Social Care Under the Communist Dictatorship: The Persecutions of a Priest Rescuing Children

Abstract

After the end of the Second World War, Hungary, like other war-torn countries, was left with countless orphaned children. The collapsed state structures were unable to care for them, so only various private or church initiatives—such as Gaudopolis, a children’s home set up by the Lutheran pastor Gábor Szehló—provided a means of survival. However, in East-Central Europe—including Hungary, Poland and Romania—where the Soviet Union had a sphere of influence, the emerging Soviet-style system was aimed at the political re-education of society. Ideological goals categorically excluded the possibility of churches being involved in the care and education of youth beyond the existing legal framework. Any person who engaged in such activities was cracked down upon. This study examines the role and responsibility of church persons in the care and upbringing of orphaned children through the fate of the Roman Catholic priest István Regőczi. In the decades of communist dictatorship, István Regőczi repeatedly reorganised orphanages, where he carried out youth education activities based on principles similar to scouting. The values he imparted to the children—such as the Christian religion, family protection, mutual help and social solidarity—were all values of Christian socialism. However, the communist dictatorship—promoting its own political ideology, Marxism—sought to take control of the upbringing and education of children by nationalising all institutions involved in this activity. Anyone who resisted this—as István Regőczi did—was made impossible in the people’s democracy of the 1950s and 1960s, and his child-saving, educating and teaching activities were prevented, even if the courts sentenced him to longer or shorter prison sentences for the crimes of illegal youth organisation, incitement and the abuse of freedom of association. This study, comparing what is described in István Regőczi’s memoirs with the surviving archival sources, shows how during these terrible decades it was possible to save orphaned, needy children and raise them in a Christian spirit, even against the will of the authorities.

1. Introduction

The 20th century has gone down in history as a succession of wars, crises and dictatorships that brought a series of severe ordeals for all European countries, including Hungary. Post-war deprivation and misery affected a large part of society, but the most affected social group were children who were left alone, orphaned or abandoned. In June 1917, during the First World War, their number reached 97,972 (Molnár 2024, p. 117). After the Second World War, in 1945, there were about 200,000 war orphans and 1 million homeless children in Hungary. The solution to their plight became one of the most important social problems of the 20th century in Hungary

During and after both wars, a series of laws were passed to deal with the issue, and attempts were made to enforce them by decree, with little success. However, not only did the state child protection system try to take care of orphans, including the Orphans’ Committee, but also numerous social institutions and actions were established during the First World War, including the Counselling Office founded by Count Franciska Apponyi and the Auguszta Emergency Aid Fund (Molnár 2024, pp. 118–19).

However, the scale of the problem dwarfed the proportion of people who were receiving help. As the Catholic priest László Zombory wrote in 1916, “It is regrettable to find that society, which takes its share in the practice of war charity in a way beyond all expectations, has hitherto paid comparatively little attention to the fate of children and war orphans abandoned by war. But conscientious care for the destiny of war orphans is a duty of honour incumbent on all of us; it is a debt which the whole nation is bound to repay” (Zombory 1916, p. 3).

It was therefore natural that the various church organisations should also play a significant part in charitable work.

In our study, we would like to use the example of a Hungarian Catholic priest to show how orphaned children who had lost their parents could be raised in a religious spirit under an atheistic dictatorship. The communist regime used every means at its disposal to ensure that only the ideological principles it supported could be applied in the upbringing of children, and it sought to prevent any other attempts. Thus, between 1945 and 1950, communist politicians in Hungary systematically dismantled Catholic and Protestant church youth clubs and associations (Balogh 2008, pp. 51–60).

The communities that managed to avoid being shut down by the authorities for the longest time were those that did not officially belong to any church organisation but were involved in raising and caring for children out of personal motivation, such as the protagonist of our story, István Regőczi. In our study, we would like to show through his activities that the Communist Party, which became a decisive factor in the political life in a country under Soviet occupation, also considered religious education to be part of its fight against church institutions. The communists defined one of their main tasks as uprooting the churches that had been embedded in the fabric of society for centuries, removing them from the masses of believers, making their operation impossible and eliminating the possibility of religious life and practice. In this environment, Regőczi courageously undertook the care for orphaned children, in accordance with his faith and pastoral duties.

A comprehensive presentation of Christian social welfare during the communist dictatorship would exceed the scope of this study. Therefore, we have focused on one person, István Regőczi, so our historical approach to the subject is essentially a case study related to microhistory (Levi 1991, pp. 97–119). The difficulty with this is that narrowing down the subject of this study (to the history of a settlement, a community, a family, or an individual) entails a lack of sources, or indeed an abundance of them (see, for example, war memoirs), as well as the selection of sources based on memory. The difficulty of the historian’s work in this case is precisely how to fill in the missing links in the stories so that the picture reconstructed from the remaining data is coherent and scientifically acceptable (Davis 1990, pp. 28–34).

The starting point for our article was István Regőczi’s own memoir, which was first published in 1988 by the author himself and later reprinted several times in Hungary after the collapse of the communist dictatorship at the turn of 1989/1990 and the subsequent change in regime (Regőczi 1988).

In our study, we attempted to compare subjective descriptions of events with documents generated during the operation of the repressive apparatus of power; that is, we compared events experienced and written about by ordinary people, in this case a clergyman, with secret service sources generated by state agencies concerning him. In the case of state security sources, source criticism was particularly important, as separating information from disinformation always presents historians with a very difficult task. We tried to treat both sources—Regőczi’s memoir and the state security sources—with strong source criticism, and we found that the content of the state security sources confirmed what was written in the memoir. Thus, a picture of a life unfolded before us that was not refuted by the sources preserved by the opposing parties in the microhistory under investigation but was rather confirmed by them. This is a very rare example in the study of the life stories of church figures operating during the communist dictatorship.

István Regőczi’s child rescue activities were not unique. After both World War I and World War II, the increase in the number of children left orphaned as a result of the war placed a heavy burden on child protection institutions. Although they tried to deal with the situation, in addition to state care, the help of civil and church organisations, as well as private individuals, was also necessary. We discussed these briefly in the first part of our study, highlighting the elements that are important from the perspective of our topic. However, a detailed and comprehensive presentation of the state, civil and church institutional systems dealing with child protection requires independent research and may be possible in a future study.

István Regőczi’s activities were not unique in his era, but his stance against the communist dictatorship elevated him to the status of an exceptional personality. For this reason, we focused on describing his story in our study.

2. Saving Children After the First World War

Hungary lived through a series of crises after the First World War. In 1920, with the signing of the Treaty of Trianon, the country suffered significant territorial losses, with serious economic and social consequences. Hungary lost, among other things, Transylvania and access to the Adriatic Sea, which meant that children could no longer be sent on summer holidays to the seaside or to the mountains of Transylvania. At the same time, support for children in precarious situations and child welfare had been high on the national and international political agenda.

In order to improve the lot of children, social, charitable and religious organisations organised a number of relief actions in Budapest and other cities. In various districts of the capital, the Red Cross set up soup kitchens where free food was distributed. But several charitable associations, such as the Workers’ Child Friendly Association or the Sofia National Children’s Sanatorium Association, also provided holiday care for children. These mainly tried to provide care within the country: for example, in the sanatoriums at Balatonalmadi and Balatonszabadin, around a thousand children were cared for each summer (Magyar Közigazgatás 1924, p. 6).

In Hungary, the National League for the Protection of Children was the main organiser of the holiday trips abroad. From 1920 the destinations included the Netherlands, Switzerland, England and, from 1923, Belgium. The vast majority of the children who went abroad came from Budapest and a few rural towns; the majority of them were workers, petty bourgeois and intellectuals, and a small number were middle class, but in 1922, for example, the Minister of Defence’s circular 116.548/12.1922. allocated sixty places within the groups going to Holland and Switzerland for the children of officers and non-commissioned officers of the armed forces (Honvédségi Közlöny 1922, p. 508). The children to be sent were between the ages of 6 and 12 for Roman Catholics and 6 and 14 for Protestants, in need of respite and physically weakened but not suffering from organ problems. An official medical certificate was required to show that there had been no case of contagious disease in the applicant’s family during the previous 4 weeks. Children who travelled abroad were allowed to spend six months in foster homes or with families in the host country.

The holiday presented a huge challenge for organisers at home and in the host countries. They had to organise travel, organise the groups by denomination, as well as the reception, accommodation, boarding, education, contact with parents and return. Between 1920 and 1 January 1928, doctors examined 110,000 children (Gergely 1987, pp. 13–14).

On several occasions, the implementation of aid operations was hampered by conflicts arising from the Hungarian and international political situation and religious or even personal conflicts. Even the first train had to wait for the Bavarian railway strike to end before it could leave, and only then, on 10 February 1920, could the train carrying 260 girls and 340 boys aged 6–14, 2 doctors, 20 nurses, 10 deaconesses and their boss, Baron Josephine Prónay, roll out of the Keleti Railway Station. A subsequent train was delayed by riots in Germany. From 20 June to 8 August 1920, the international transport workers’ boycott almost completely disrupted relations between the Netherlands and Hungary (Gergely 1987, p. 15). On 29 June 1920, a transport to England was cancelled because the British Minister of Health telegraphed that there had been an outbreak of bubonic plague at the Stonar Observatory, where the health of children arriving for a holiday was being checked (Friss Újság 1920, p. 3). In May 1922, the American Relief Committee ceased operations due to restorationist efforts and the rise of anti-semitism in Hungary. Also causing great difficulties was the Austrian State Railways’ announcement at the end of 1923 of a fare increase of 146 million Austrian Kroner for a one-way fare for 600 children on the Hegyeshalom–Passau line from 1 January 1924, which the National League for the Protection of Children was unable to pay and turned to the International Children’s Aid Association for help (Gergely 1987, p. 16).

At the same time, there was considerable social and political support for the issue of child lung transplantation. This is evidenced by the fact that the Minister of Religion and Public Education, in his decree 183.670/1921, ordered that the film “Dutch Heart”, showing the arrival of the Hungarian–Dutch children’s train, be shown in all the cinematographic studios in the country (Budapesti Közlöny 1924, p. 1). And on 14 February 1925, on the proposal of Prime Minister István Bethlen, Governor Miklós Horthy awarded Cardinal Désiré Félicien Francois Joseph Mercier, the Archbishop of Mechelen, the Hungarian Red Cross in recognition of his merits in the field of the Hungarian children’s holiday abroad, as well as in the field of public charity and the alleviation of poverty in Hungary, and high state honours had been awarded to Kálmán Kállay, a Dutch reformed theologian, and Miklós Knebel, a Roman Catholic pastor and the head of the Dutch Catholic Children’s Plantation (Budapesti Közlöny 1925, p. 1).

The earliest of the child-planting campaigns was the Dutch–Hungarian aid campaign, launched in 1920. This followed the two daughters of the Dutch Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper, the deeply religious Henrietta and Johanna, who in 1916 spent nearly six months in Hungary on a charity mission, caring for wounded Hungarian soldiers in a war hospital in Budapest. Henrietta, who also learned Hungarian during this time, continued to devote herself to the poor, war-damaged Hungarian children in poor health conditions in the years following the war, and she brought their plight to the attention of the Dutch public. This was the start of a more than ten-year-long children’s aid campaign, which saw some 70,000 children sent to the Netherlands and Belgium to be strengthened after a few months of care and nursing and then returned to Hungary (Kronauer 2006, p. 6199).

In 1920, according to the National League for the Protection of Children, 3588 children travelled to the Netherlands, of whom 2453 came at the invitation of the Protestant Centraal Comité in the Hague and 1135 at the invitation of the Roman Catholic Huisvestings-Comité in ‘s Hertogenbosch (Mezősi 2001, p. 81).

In the Netherlands, the institutional backdrop was provided by the Foundation for Needy People (Stichting Mensen in Nood forthcoming), which from 1917 aimed to transport orphaned, uncared for and needy children from warring countries to the Netherlands, to place them in families or suitable shelters and later to bring them back to their homeland. In this spirit, Belgian, German, Austrian (from 1918) and Hungarian (from 1920) children were placed with Dutch families (KDC SMN).

The organisation and accommodation were based on strict denominational separation. On departure, Catholic and Protestant children were placed in separate train carriages. After their arrival in the Netherlands, they were placed with Catholic or Protestant families for a few months (Hajtó 2018, p. 9).

Perhaps because of the difficulties encountered, the momentum of the Dutch trips seemed to break down from 1923 onwards. This is evidenced by the fact that the charitable Roman Catholic Housing Committee (Rooms-Katholiek Huisvestingcomité) found that the number of Catholic families applying for child benefits had fallen, while the demand from Hungary continued unabated (Hajtó 2018, p. 9).

Then, in 1926, the Dutch envoy Adriaan van de Sande Bakhuyzen attributed the decline in the country’s and families’ receptiveness to the floods that had hit his country and the resulting increased financial burden.

It was therefore a logical step to involve Catholic Belgium in the relief effort, which between 1923 and 1927 was heavily involved in humanitarian projects for Hungarian children, despite the fact that the country itself had suffered heavy losses during the war and was in need of aid (Hajtó 2009, p. 204).

The contact was initiated by the “Hungarian–Dutch Catholic Children’s Aid Committee” chaired by Cardinal János Csernoch, the Cardinal Archbishop of Esztergom, which resulted in the establishment of Le Comité Belge de Secours aux Enfants de Hongrie, or the Hungarian Children’s Adoption Committee of Belgium (Hermán 1998).

The Belgian foster parents were able to specify their needs for the children: what age and gender they wanted and what class of child they expected. As the Belgian organisation was entirely based on the Catholic community, the question of religious affiliation did not arise: all the outgoing children were Catholic (Hajtó 2018, pp. 14–17).

The children were officially allowed to stay in Belgium for six months, but the date of return was set by agreement between the Belgian and Hungarian parents. Some stayed for six months, others for one or even two or three years. In the case of transports to Belgium, around 5 to 10 percent of children never returned to Hungary but settled in Belgium (Hajtó 2009, p. 206). Remaining abroad depended mainly on the circumstances of the children’s parental families: the greater the economic gap between the biological family and the foster family, the more likely it was that the children would not return to Hungary (Kind-Kovács 2013, p. 104.).

A total of 61,447 people went abroad in the 1919–1930 child rescue operation, of whom 28,563 went to the Netherlands, 21,542 to Belgium, 10,608 to Switzerland, 603 to England and 131 to Sweden. The National League for the Protection of Children had already evaluated the action in 1926: the main result was considered to be an improvement in children’s health. Of the 52,620 children who had been expatriated by then, 56 had died, and 2 of them died as victims of accidents. Eighty percent of those who died had contracted tuberculosis during their stay (Gergely 1987, p. 21).

According to the League’s 1936 report, this activity was “the most interesting chapter not only in the accounts of the years 1919–1920, but in the entire life history of the Hungarian League for the Protection of Children”, whose “contemporary impact will perhaps never be recognized and appreciated” (Kind-Kovács 2013, p. 102).

3. Saving Children During the Communist Dictatorship in Hungary

The Second World War was one of the greatest armed conflicts of mankind, spanning all continents. The death toll far exceeded the number of casualties in any conflict fought up to that time. It is estimated that around 75 million people died, 40 million of them civilians, mainly due to starvation, disease and genocide, in addition to the fighting. The war was also an enormous ordeal for children, many of whom died in the war or, if they survived the fighting, lost their parents. In Europe, one and a half million children died and thirteen million had been left alone. A 1949 UNESCO publication estimated that in 1945 there were 200,000 orphans and 1,000,000 homeless children in Hungary (Children of Europe 1949, p. 7). These children spent one of the most important periods of their lives in wartime conditions, in the shelters of bombed-out houses or wandering the streets in small or large groups. They did anything to survive. Their lives are portrayed in the 1947 film Somewhere in Europe, which is particularly interesting for the fact that its child characters were chosen from orphanage residents. The winner of the second prize at the Locarno International Film Festival, the filmmakers were inspired by the children’s town of Gaudiopolis, founded by the Lutheran pastor Gábor Sztehlo, where thousands of children orphaned by war were cared for (Sztehlo 1994; Andrási and Laborczi 2018).

In a post-war Europe in ruins, states were unable to effectively help those in need with child protection issues, among many other tasks. This is why the involvement and assistance of individuals and organisations across Europe had become crucial. In France, for example, Moulin Vieux; in Italy Civita Vecchia, Children’s Town of Turin and Pestalozzi Village; in Switzerland the Villages of Marcinello and Trogen; and in the Netherlands the Foundation for 5000 Jewish Children were the “children’s towns” that helped thousands of children to rebuild their lives and reintegrate into society (Children of Europe 1949, pp. 10–12).

In Hungary, many individuals and organisations also tried to help these abandoned orphaned children. During World War II, starting in March 1944, Lutheran pastor Gábor Sztehló established children’s homes that provided shelter for children persecuted because of their Jewish heritage. His efforts to save children were supported by the International Red Cross. The network, which saved more than 1600 children in 32 children’s homes, became the basis for the Gaudiopolis Children’s Republic, established in 1945 (Kunt 2022, pp. 21–55).

In the Gaudiopolis children’s republic established by Gábor Sztehlo between 1945 and 1950 at the Pax Children’s Home in Budapest, the number of residents grew from an initial 200 to 700–800. With the help of the Danish and Swiss Red Cross (food, furniture, etc.), the children were engaged in fruit growing, carpentry, locksmithing, painting and tailoring workshops in addition to their studies. Research highlights that the self-governing children’s republic not only saved many Jewish and war orphans but was also a kind of pedagogical experiment that functioned as a form of war trauma therapy through community life and self-expression. In other words, it helped the children to psychologically process the horrors they had experienced (Kunt 2022, pp. 80–88).

No matter how successful Sztehlo’s initiative was, Hungary’s communist leaders decided in 1950 to liquidate and nationalise Gaudiopolis, as they could not allow anyone outside the party–state apparatus to engage in youth education activities (Sztehlo 1994, pp. 201–25).

Similarly to Gaudiopolis was the creation of the “Boys’ Village” children’s village, organised during the war in 1943 by Gyula Pataki and Mihály Szekeres, members of the Christian Youth Association. The Szekeres family founded the children’s home in the Szepes part of Debrecen. Their main objective was to provide children with emotional, spiritual, physical and religious education (Pataki 2008, pp. 150–56). Initially sixteen children were cared for, and by October 1945 more than thirty were cared for (Tóth 2018, pp. 26–27). The day-to-day running of the home was managed by their own local government. Unfortunately, the children’s home burned down in the summer of 1944, and Mihály Szekeres died in the flames. Afterwards, in 1945, an attempt was made to rebuild the home on a farm in Ebes, but soon the state-run children’s educational institution established in Hajdúhadháza in 1946 absorbed the “Fiúkfalva” children’s village.

After 1945, Zsigmond Ádám was commissioned by the Teachers’ Trade Union to set up homes for orphaned children. He began to search for abandoned castles in Hungary to set up children’s homes. In 1946, the educator set up the first state-run children’s home in Hajdúhadháza, of which he became the director. The children at the home retained their education and physical education, but the possibility of their religious upbringing was discarded, as they wanted to conform to the government education politicians of the time, who considered only atheistic education acceptable. Despite these efforts, Adam sought to promote progressive educational principles (e.g., the rejection of corporal punishment), but the life of the model institution was interfered with by the politics of the era (Czike 1997, p. 41). In 1949 the home was closed down; the building had to be handed over to the Soviet Army, and the children were placed in the home established in Tisadob in 1950 (Veress 2012, p. 189).

The above examples show that many people began to address the fate of children who were orphaned or made homeless because of the war, but over time the emerging Communist Party state did not allow homes to be run where children could receive a religious education. The Eaglets Home, founded by István Regőczi in 1949, was a victim of this concept.

4. István Regőczi the Rescuer of Eagle Seals

After 1945, the Soviet Union, with the support of local communist parties, aimed to establish a Soviet-style political system in the Central and Eastern European countries occupied by its army, including Hungary, with a number of political, economic and social consequences. The Hungarian communist political leadership, with Soviet help, established a totalitarian Stalinist dictatorship, one of the main elements of which was the political re-education of society, especially of the youth (Köbel 2005, p. 133). The ideological goals formulated for this purpose categorically excluded the possibility that organisations other than those linked to the Communist Party, especially the churches, could be involved in the education of youth (Gergely 2012, pp. 163–72). Anyone who was involved in such activities was targeted. It was in such a political environment that István Regőczi, a Roman Catholic priest, began to care for children orphaned by the world war, a youth education activity akin to scouting.

Regőczi made several trips to Belgium as a child and young man. First during the Belgian children’s rescue mission, which started in 1925 to help Hungarian families impoverished by the war (Hajtó 2020, pp. 61–77), and then after his school years he went of his own free will to Poperinge in Flanders, where he spent ten years with the support of Dean-Canon Richard Vervacke. Regőczi learned Flemish and French, graduated from the seminary in Bruges and was ordained a priest in 1943. In Bruges, Regőczi met several times with the director of the Institute for the Blind, named after St. Raphael, Father Arnold Ghesquière, who inspired him to start working with poor orphaned children in Belgium (Regőczi 1991, pp. 200–4).1 When he had the opportunity to return home during the war, he continued the work he had started in Belgium in Hungary. He gathered orphaned children—whom the bishop of Székesfehérvár, Ottokár Prohászka, had named “eagle babies” after a Christmas meditation—and began to build a house from the ruins in Pestszenterzsébet. In the midst of the bombings, with the support of the inhabitants of the area, he took care of fifteen orphaned children, and during the reign of the Arrow Cross he saved several Jewish families from destruction, providing them with shelter (Regőczi 1991, pp. 221–22).2

After the end of the war, his bishop transferred him to Vác, where he continued to care for orphaned children, while also carrying out parish duties. Regőczi and his eaglets first found a home in a kindergarten building, and then, as their numbers grew, they took over vacant houses. Soon the number of children in need of care rose to over a hundred. Regőczi was assisted in caring for the orphans by a few volunteers, and his financial problems were eased by aid from Belgium.3 Due to the number of children slowly rising to over 200, he started to build a new home, which they were able to move into at the end of 1947. This became the Sasi Home (Regőczi 1991, pp. 264–65). In 1947, nine Salvatorian Sisters and a Piarist teacher were already teaching the children, and Jolán Kemény’s sister Erzsébet arrived at the home as a volunteer.

The financial conditions of running the orphanage posed a serious challenge for Regőczi. As he put it, “It was a terrible hassle and expense to equip my new orphanage, to maintain, clothe and educate my children.”4 But the whole population of Vác slowly moved to help feed the eagle seals. On more than one occasion, the mayor sent out food vouchers, and the police even sent food confiscated from black marketeers (Regőczi 1991, p. 248).

Despite the donations, the children faced ongoing financial difficulties to support themselves. Regőczi travelled to Belgium twice, in 1947 and 1948, to ask for support to continue operations.5 Through his contacts, he had repeatedly received donations of mattresses, blankets, sheets, clothing, food, bicycles and even sports equipment (e.g., football boots, fencing equipment, etc.).6 On 6 June 1948, in Bruges, Arnold Ghesquière founded a society called the “Eagle Seals Society”, whose main purpose was to collect and deliver donations (clothing, food, etc.) for the orphanage run by Regőczi in Vác.7 The association, founded by thirteen Belgians, was instrumental in putting the institute’s finances on a firm, but slow, footing. Jerome Mahieu, the Bishop of Bruges, became its President and Abbot Arnold Ghesquière its Treasurer. The Society was governed by a three-member Board of Directors appointed by the General Assembly for a term of three years. The Board of Directors was responsible for organising fundraising, receiving bequests, concluding leases and representing the association in litigation. The main body of the Eagle Seals Society was the General Assembly, which met at least once a year, where the members of the Society decided on the provisions of the Statutes, the appointment of the members of the Board of Directors, the adoption of the budget and the possible exclusion of members. Day-to-day business was conducted through an administrator. Abbot Arnold Ghesquière was appointed as the administrator.8

Due to the growing number of children and thanks to the Belgian help, Regőczi started building a new home, but political changes prevented him from realising his plans. In the spring of 1949, the authorities called on Regőczi to change his educational methods and accept state supervision, but he refused. In response, a few months later, on 5 August, the authorities closed down the Sasi Home in a police action, and Regőczi, who had protested against the action, was deprived of his personal freedom and imprisoned in an internment camp (Regőczi 1991, p. 300),9 from which he was released only in 1953.10 The eaglets’ home was closed for a year and then converted into a teachers’ hostel.

After his release, Regőczi tried to reunite his orphans, but his church superior, auxiliary bishop Vince Kovács, tried to make his activities impossible by repeatedly dispensing him, i.e., by transferring him to another position.

After the fall of the 1956 Hungarian War of Independence, Regőczi compiled a brochure entitled “Eagles in the Storm”, which he sent to Belgium. In it he wanted to commemorate the people who had taken part in the fighting, especially his own “youngsters”, which in turn aroused the interest of the police in his activities (Regőczi 1991, pp. 356–58).11 Because he continued to raise eagle seals despite warnings from the authorities, he was arrested in 1962 after a lengthy investigation on suspicion of incitement and the abuse of freedom of association.12 At the hearing held on 18 July 1962, the court terminated the criminal proceedings against Regőczi—due to the statute of limitations—and at the same time ordered his release and the lifting of the seizure of his movable and immovable property (Regőczi 1991, pp. 382–83).13

Despite the dismissal, the church leaders again thought it better to dispatch their disobedient priest to smaller settlements from time to time, thus preventing him from dealing with the orphans. Regőczi was undeterred, and he cycled almost all over the country visiting his eagle friends. Nevertheless, he wrote a book entitled “We cannot remain silent” for the forthcoming silver mass of Arnold Ghesquière, who supported him, which was published in Belgium in 1969 (Regőczi 1991, pp. 390, 402).

The book brought Regőczi back into the focus of the authorities. In the investigation proceedings initiated in 1970, it was no longer the religious care of eagle seals that was brought against him, but the aforementioned book, which, as the investigators found, “contained hateful, inflammatory content. It is suitable for inciting hatred against the Hungarian People’s Republic, our socialist social relations, the Soviet Union and communists.”14 The court found Regőczi guilty of the crime of incitement and in its decision of 19 February 1971 sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment for two months as the main penalty and five years’ disqualification from holding public office as a subsidiary penalty.15 The prison sentence was to be served in a maximum-security prison. The court of appeal took into account a number of mitigating circumstances and reduced Regőczi’s prison sentence to one year and eight months and his ban from public office to three years (Regőczi 1991, pp. 431–33).16

The identity of Regőczi attracted the attention of not only the authorities but also the Vatican. Between 3 and 8 October 1972, Hungarian state leaders held talks with diplomats from the Holy See. During the talks, Archbishop Agostino Casaroli presented the papal request that the Hungarian government “exercise clemency in the case of 3 imprisoned priests—István Tabódy, Elemér Rózsa, István Regőczi.”.17 The Hungarian delegation’s only response was that they would look into the possibility. Finally, Regőczi was allowed to serve a third of his sentence, and on 16 December 1972 he was released from the Collector’s Prison and resumed his work (Regőczi 1991, pp. 431–33).

He started the renovation of the Chapel of Mary on Liberty Hill before he was released from prison, but he could only complete its final decoration after his release (Regőczi 1991, pp. 394–99). Although his former eagle friends were now adults, he had not stopped educating youth and helping orphaned children. He could still only hope for help from his Belgian contacts. Since Regőczi had not received a passport for a long time, the task of maintaining contacts in Belgium fell to his loyal helper, Jolán Kemény, who visited Belgium in 1979 and met the secretary of the Eagle Seals Association, who promised them further financial support.18 Regőczi repeatedly applied for a passport to visit his Belgian friends in person, but it was only in 1986 that his request was granted.19

5. Conclusions

In the years following World War II, the communists, thanks to the Soviet army occupying Hungary, pushed all other political forces out of power. One of the most important battles in this struggle was against religious worldviews and their representatives, the churches. For this reason, one of the main tasks of the state party dictatorship was the political re-education of society and the ideological education of the people. The communist political leadership categorically ruled out the possibility of churches participating in the education of young people beyond the existing legal framework. Freedom of religion extended “only to the practice of religion in churches.”

The fate of István Regőczi clearly shows that church figures, especially those involved in the education of children and young people, were kept under close surveillance by the Hungarian communist dictatorship, as the dictatorship’s leaders knew that whoever had the support of young people would also have the future. The Catholic priest who plays a central role in our study became an exceptional figure precisely because of his opposition to this system and his work despite the restrictions imposed by the dictatorship. Our study therefore focuses primarily on presenting his story. The significance and social recognition of the topic is well illustrated by the fact that István Regőczi, the pastor of the Chapel of Our Lady of Atonement in Kútvölgy, was made an honorary citizen of Vác in 1992, and on 27 February 2010, he received the Parma fidei—Shield of Faith—award in recognition of his life’s work, in which he gathered orphaned children around him for decades with his self-sacrificing work to build orphanages, churches and chapels with them and for them. His memory lives on even after his death. In 2017, he received a memorial plaque on the Wall of the Righteous Among the Nations in the garden of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and in 2019, the square in front of the Chapel of Our Lady, which he renovated, was named after him. In 2021, János Áder, President of the Republic of Hungary, established a foundation named after István Regőczi to support children who lost their parents during the coronavirus pandemic. This is how democratic states value outstanding social action. Under the communist dictatorship, however, such actions were classified as crimes, including illegal youth organisation, incitement and the abuse of freedom of association.

The exploration of the history of religious childcare, as exemplified by István Regőczi, offers numerous opportunities for further research. A separate study could examine, for example, what opportunities church institutions had during the communist dictatorship to become involved in child protection, whether they were able to take advantage of these opportunities and, if not, what prevented them from achieving their goals?

The legal system of the time emphasised the exclusive role of the state in the ideological education of young people, including in foster homes. The role of the family was reduced, the network of foster parents was dismantled and centralised children’s villages took its place. Given the legal environment created by the dictatorship, with state institutions dealing with child rearing and protection aligned with communist ideology, was there any realistic opportunity for church officials to engage in these activities? Future research and source exploration may provide relevant answers to these questions.