The Bihar county government appealed in the case of the property in Nagyvárad returned to the Roman Catholic Church.
Ilie Bolojan, the chairman of the Bihar County Assembly, announced on Thursday that he filed an appeal against the restitution board's decision, which returned the building in which the state philharmonic operates to the Roman Catholic bishopric of Nagyvárad. Following this, it will be decided in court whether the church can really get back its rightful property.
After twenty-two years of struggle, the restitution committee decided on restitution in kind in December of last year, but the news only became public a few weeks ago.
As the name suggests, the property was built by the Roman Catholic Church.
It would not be unprecedented for the county government, taking advantage of the irregularities characteristic of the functioning of the Romanian justice system in cases involving the restitution of Hungarian church-owned buildings, to lay its hands on a building that had already been legally returned to the Catholic Church: the former building built by the Order of Mercy and then leased to the Hungarian state The financial palace was returned to the church, but the county government appealed, and after dismissing the Catholic Church's evidence and the previous restitution decision based on it, the Romanian court finally took the property from its rightful owner and awarded it to the Bihar county government.
The building is currently being renovated, and the new headquarters of the county government will be created in it.
Cover image: The Romanian state does not like that the Catholic Church got its property back
Source: Facebook/Filarmonica de Stat Oradea / Oradea State Philharmonic
