This year we celebrate the 800th anniversary of the birth of St. Kinga and the 650th anniversary of the birth of St. Hedvig. On the occasion of the double jubilee, the celebration of the two saints was organized on March 21-22 in Budapest with the cooperation and participation of Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, and Lithuanians.

The central location of the events was the Main Parish Church of Our Lady in downtown Budapest, the main patron of the holiday was Cardinal Péter Erdő, Primate, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest.

At the beginning of the series of celebrations, on March 21, Cardinal Péter Erdő received in the Primate's Palace in Budavar Marek Jędraszewski, the archbishop of Krakow, who came for the double jubilee, Artur Ważny, the auxiliary bishop of Tarnów, Paweł Baran, the parish priest of the Wawel parish in Krakow, František Trstenský, bishop of the diocese (Slovakia), and Kęstutis Smilgevičius. , the general secretary of the Lithuanian bishops' conference.

After the meeting, the guests laid a wreath at the statue of St. Hedwig and Jagielló Ulászló near the Vienna Gate of the Buda Castle, and then took part in a musical devotion and night worship at the main parish church in downtown Budapest, where later that afternoon St. Kinga of Árpád-háza and St. Hedvig of Anjou Polish and Hungarian historians Piotr Stefaniak and Hungarian historian Imre Molnár held an informative lecture entitled "from the Polish and Hungarian point of view".

On the morning of Friday, March 22, László Kövér, the Speaker of the Parliament, received the Polish, Slovak and Lithuanian delegations, whose members, under the leadership of church leaders, participated in the 150th festive meeting of the Hungarian Parliamentary Prayer Group chaired by MP Imre Vejkey (KDNP), as well as reflections they held and prayed together.

From 3:00 p.m. that day, at the conference held in the hall of the Sapientia College of Religious Studies, historians spoke about the role of St. Kinga and St. Hedvig in Polish, Lithuanian, Slovak and Hungarian history, and then the church representatives of the celebrating nations adopted a joint statement (read below - ed.) , in which they stated that by recalling the lives of the two saints, they are once again aware that the source of the future can only be the Christian love and solidarity of the people and nations living here in Central Europe.

The full article can be read on Magyar Kurír!

Featured image: Zita Merényi/Hungarian Kurír