Speech by Katalin Novák at the Pannonhalma 800 celebration

Your Excellencies, the Apostolic Nuncio and Archbishops, the Most Reverend Metropolitan, Distinguished Teachers, Ladies and Gentlemen, and above all, dear Students!

Thank you for the invitation, I am honoured to celebrate with you today. It is always a pleasure to come to Pannonhalma.

The organisation of the Kingdom of Hungary was still a dream when in 996, at the request of Géza, Grand Prince of the Hungarians, Saint Astrik came to Hungary and the first Hungarian Benedictine monastery on Saint Martin's Hill became a reality. Astrik was the first abbot of Pannonhalma, the first and certainly the most effective diplomat of the future Hungarian state. He also succeeded in his mission to Pope Sylvester, bringing the crown to King Stephen from Rome.

A city built on a hill, a church and a school built on a hill are visible from afar. A point of reference, pointing the way. Monte Cassino, Melk, the Benedictine monasteries of Pannonhalma are the bastions of Christian Europe. They have eternal rules, values and faith. The holy mountain of Pannonia, Pannonhalma, belongs to us Hungarians. 

Our over ten consecutive centuries of Hungarian history are manifested here. Especially in its main building, the basilica, consecrated 800 years ago this year. The founder of our country asked the Benedictine monks to pray for the survival of Hungary at all times. They kept his request and have kept it ever since. 

The Benedictines do not destroy the world but build it. They heal their environment, not poison it. They do not create chaos, but harmony. They guard, educate, and do not create disorder, but order. Their work as educators is beneficial and not harmful. Instead of irresponsibility, they call for responsibility. 
And they do not seek to take the land, but to make it fertile. All this may seem simple, but we all know it is not.

Ladies and Gentlemen!

This city, built on a hill, a living Christian spirituality, gives hope to us all. Hope, because this city could never be destroyed. It has never lost its faith and it has never denied its nation.
Over a thousand years, it has survived Tatar invasions, Turkish invasions, fires and world conflagrations. It was reborn after the reign of the king who had preferred to wear a hat over wearing his crown and who had dissolved this monastic order. It was a refuge for children and women amid the devastation of World War II. 

Here, a World Righteousness Award winner, Father Chrysostom saved the lives of Jews and soldiers absent without leave during the Nazi terror. During the Communist persecution of the Church, Pannonhalma became a welcoming home for disbanded monastic orders, priests and friends. The Benedictine Secondary School remained a bastion of faith after 1950, becoming one of eight Catholic secondary schools that continued to operate in Hungary during the years of communism. The fathers endured through the era of attic sweeps and intimidation, as well as the 1957 raid when, after the revolution, three Soviet tankfuls of worker’s guards in their gruesome puff vests arrived here to search the students, with Father Dávid Söveges, the principal, experiencing a near-fatal assault. 

Pannonhalma always managed to get through even such desperate times.

It has preserved its traditions, expanded and renewed its environment, and has never for a moment forgotten its Christian mission. Its monastery is now over a thousand years old, its basilica is 800 years old and its school is just over 200 years old. 

Hungary needs Pannonhalma, the mountain that lifts it towards the sky.

Dear Celebrating Benedictine Community!

When we ask what Pannonhalma means to the Hungarian nation, let us not forget what Pope John Paul II said right here in the autumn of 1996, and I quote: "The beginnings of your history go back to the time when the Christian East and West were still undivided. Your roots go back to that blessed age. It is a past that obliges you and gives you a mission, but it is also a guarantee of your future." 

His words could not be truer now. 

From the heights of Pannonhalma, in the light of its thousand-year history, we can clearly see the beauty of our country, the value of our nation, the unity of Christianity. Pannonhalma is the cradle of Hungarian education. 

Education here today can and should be an inspiration for the whole Hungarian school system. Knowledge and faith are united here. Competitiveness and moral education are one. They strengthen, rather than weaken, each other. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the teachers and tutors working here.

On the evening of 15 April 2019, we saw heart-breaking images from Paris. We saw images of Notre Dame burning, which shocked us all. Let us now give thanks that the basilica, which is just as old as Notre Dame, is standing. It stands, not demolished, not burnt down, but beautified, enlarged, with its 800-year-old walls intact.

Let us be thankful that we can stand here strengthened and not weakened, that we can witness construction and not degradation. And let us also give thanks that the 800-year-old walls can command our respect, prompt us to introspection and serve as a place of prayer.

Ora et labora! reads the motto of the Benedictine monks. Orando et laborando, reads the inscription on the façade of the Reformed College of Debrecen. If we keep to the order, ora et labora, orando et laborando, and always put prayer before work, we will find the meaning of our work. I myself consider this to be the guiding principle for my own work. If I look to prayer for guidance, then I can trust that my work will bring results.

Allow me to address you on a more personal note. I am a mother, a mother of three children. My husband and I are raising children aged 15, 17 and 20. I have often wondered how difficult it must be for a parent, a mother, to send her child to a school like this, or even, I might say, to the Benedictine monastery in Pannonhalma. How difficult it must be to make that decision, and at the same time how uplifting a decision it is perhaps, but so far I have seen it more as a difficulty. I know a lot of Benedictines, and in fact I am discovering now how many more I know, because on this occasion I have been contacted by many who I did not know had been Benedictine students, but who would still have liked to be here today. It was through the Benedictines that I began to understand why, in the end, it is possible to make this decision as a mother, why one can feel that letting one's child come here and allowing them to be educated here is meaningful. I asked some who attended the Benedictine Secondary School here to tell me what this school has given them, and I thank them for sharing their thoughts with me, which helped me a lot in preparing for today.

Then I sought help on the Internet and found the speech of a student who graduated from here. His name is László Bodnár. I'm sure you know him, but I only got his name from his speech on the Internet. And when I listened to the ten-minute speech of this graduating student, which I recommend to those who have not met him yet, I really understood why it is good for a mother and a father to let their child come to school here. He began his speech by saying that he had not liked Pannonhalma. And then he explains in ten minutes what it is that made him go from a child to a young adult here, what it is that now makes him wear the Benedictine badge so proudly on the lapel of his jacket, and I understood that this school can really prepare you for life, that parents whose children have attended this school and received guidance here can really be proud and grateful. 

As I listened to László Bodnár and, through him, to the Benedictine students, I was touched by the respect, the sensibility, the wisdom and the eloquent Hungarian language with which he put his thoughts into words, and for that I would like to thank all those who were involved in the education of László Bodnár and are still involved in the education of many like him here in Pannonhalma.

Szilveszter E. Vizi, - also a Benedictine student- helped me in my preparations for this visit. Now I would like to cite Professor Vizi in connection with another occasion. On the day of my inauguration into the office of President of Hungary, we started the day with an ecumenical service conducted by Bishop Zoltán Balog. I would have liked to have been helped in this way to start carrying out my duties. And it was at this ecumenical service in Calvin Square that Professor E. Vizi asked in his prayer that the President of Hungary would have the support of the Patron Saint of Europe, Saint Benedict, in these difficult hours of history.

Yesterday I returned from a three-day visit to Brussels, where, together with our Ambassador, I had the opportunity to take part in a very meaningful programme, including an audience with Philippe, King of the Belgians. During the hour and a half that we spent talking, while we sat at the private audience with King Philippe, there was talk of Christianity, and there was talk of the fact that he had been to Pannonhalma, and even danced in Pannonhalma in the very halls where we are to meet later, and perhaps dine together. And then, in Brussels, in the evening, when I was meeting a community of Hungarians who had emigrated or resettled there after 2004 or who had been forced to go there for work, a lady approached me. She handed me a bunch of prayer cards and said that the only reason she was here was because her community wanted to assure me through her that they were praying for me every day and praying every day that I would make wise decisions. 

The prayers of Professor E. Vizi, the prayers of these Hungarian Christians in Brussels, give me the strength day by day to do the work that I do, and I trust that our prayers for each other will help us to do our work with integrity, with honour and with the wisdom that the Lord has given us, and that is the greatest help we can receive.

And, speaking of prayers for one another, the Holy Father Pope Francis bids farewell to everyone by asking them to pray for him, as even he is under the belief that this is the best that we can do. Alongside prayers, when he visited Hungary, I wanted to provide him with some physical nourishment, so at our last encounter in Hungary, as I bid him farewell at the airport, I provided him with cheese sticks from my grandmother's recipe. Upon learning that the Benedictine students are collecting donations for an anti-drug mission organised by the Reformed Church at a bake sale following today's event, I thought I would also contribute to this fundraising campaign with the same cheese sticks I had baked for the Pope, so I also brought this for you today – a bit of physical nourishment to accompany our thoughts. I also ask the young people that when we are together- as I will have the opportunity to be with the students studying here- please remind me to take a photo for BeReal together because I saved the occasion from yesterday to do it. For anyone who may not understand this now, please forgive us for this shared point.

Thank you for inviting me, thank you for being with us, and thank you for celebrating with us. Also, thank you for praying with us to the Lord to grant us the gift of peace, compassion and courage, for we all know that His is the kingdom, the power, and the glory.

With this, I officially open the 'Basilica 800 Memorial Year.

Thank you for listening.