The Gelsey Vilmos Award with a plaque is awarded to a person who, as a committed Christian, has achieved outstanding results in the Hungarian national culture, education system and management.
Benedictine monk Richárd Korzenszky and ministerial commissioner László Hegyi received this year's Gelsey awards, the awards were presented on Friday, on the centenary of the birth of Vilmos Gelsey, the namesake, in the Dóm Visitor Center in Szeged, the Diocese of Szeged-Csanád informed MTI.
The Szeged-Csanád Diocese and its Gelsey Vilmos Pedagogical Institute founded the award in 2014, paying tribute to the work of Vilmos Gelsey, who passed away this year. The Hungarian-born British economist and banker graduated from the Royal University Catholic High School in Budapest, and played a significant role in this institution getting its original building back and resuming education there.
The Vilmos Gelsey Award with the statue can be awarded to a person who has been serving the development of Hungarian society based on Christian values in an exemplary way for a long time, and the cause of Christian education by strengthening the economy and culture.
This year's awardee, Richárd Korzenszky, graduated from the Benedictine High School in Pannonhalm in 1959 and entered the Benedictine order that same year. He studied theology in Pannonhalma, obtained a secondary school teacher's certificate specializing in Hungarian-Russian at Eötvös Loránd University, and then obtained a doctorate. He worked as a high school teacher in Győr until 1973, then as secretary to the abbot of Pannonhalmán until 1979, as well as a theology and high school teacher. From 1989 to 1991, he was the abbot of the Pannonhalmán monastery, and at the same time, he was the authorized representative of the Hungarian Catholic Church in the Ministry of Culture and Public Education, where he also worked as ministerial commissioner until 1994. In that period, until 1996, he held the position of executive president of the Main Authority of Catholic Schools. He has been living in Tihany since October 1994, until 2017 he was the abbot of the Benedictine Abbey in Tihany.
The Gelsey Vilmos Award with a plaque is awarded to a person who, as a committed Christian, has achieved outstanding results in the Hungarian national culture, education system and management. This year's award was given to László Hegyi, ministerial commissioner responsible for the development of church higher education and vocational training institutions. Born in 1968, he completed his high school studies at the Franciscan High School in Esztergom. Since the end of the 1980s, he has been an active participant in several local and national civic initiatives. He completed his higher education studies at the Budapest Teacher Training College, the Academy of Religious Studies, the Janus Pannonius University, and the joint training of the Századvég Political School and the Budapest University of Economics. He worked as a teacher, from 1998 he worked at the Office of the Parliament, and from 2000 he was a government official. His duties have always affected church education and government-church relations.
MTI
Photo: atv.hu
