'exiled Primate
CATHOLIC HERALD REPORTER CARDINAL KOENIG OF VIENNA went last Sunday to Budapest for talks lasting several hours with the Hungarian Primate. Cardinal Mindszenty. voluntarily "exiled" in the United States legation there. He reported that the Primate was in "relatively good health".
The official reason given for the visit was to deliver Vatican Council documents to the Primate.
But the Hungarian ambassador in Rome later went to Budapest for consultations with his government. This, some sources say, means that during the meeting of the Cardinals the Vatican suggestion was again brought up that Cardinal Mindszenty might leave Hungary and go to Rome.
Besides Cardinal Koenig, who has visited the Primate twice before at the legation, the only other visitors have been the Primate's mother, now dead, and his sisters.
He has refused so far to leave Hungary or the legation unless the Government clears him of charges of spying and "illegal manipulation of currency". and fully recognises him as Primate.
The Government has refused
this. They say the Cardinal is free to leave the country-so long as he never comes back.
Some sources have said that Cardinal Koenig's previous visits have been to suggest that the Primate might move to Rome. in view of th,f. improvement of Vatican-Hungarian relations last year.
But now these relations are reported to have got worse.
Meantime, the Primate stays on at the U.S. legation where he has been sheltering since the 1956 rising. At that time he was freed briefly from house arrest. He was first imprisoned in 1949 and transferred to house arrest in 1955.
ATIACKS CONTINUE Meanwhile in Poland, Government attacks continue on the Primate, Cardinal Wyszynski.
The latest charge, by the Polish Premier. is that the Cardinal is trying to make the Church "a State within a State".
in a letter to the Polish bishops published last Sunday the Premier tells them, "You will not get passports until you change your disloyal attitude towards Poland."
This had already been refused to the Cardinal personally.
The present Government attacks are the result of conciliatory moves between the Polish and German bishops, brought out especially by the invitation of the German
bishops to the Polish "1,000 years of Christianity" celebrations next May.
The Cardinal has said that some of the charges are "too humiliating to note-. But he said he would continue to defend the rights of the Church.
He pressed on last Sunday with claims for Catholic education in the schools. The Government, he says, contrary to a 1956 agreement, have banned priests from the schools.
Not on)/ the people, he said, but the State too would profit from a co-ordination of Church and State in bringing up children. But "we want modern upbringing that is not contrary to Christian upbringing".
In the premier's letter, to which the Cardinal was replying, the invitation to the German Bishops was said to have anti-Russian implications.
The Premier himself, Mr. Joseph Cyrankiewicz, who was a prisoner in the Aushchwitz concentration camp, said, "No Bishops' document can erase the Hitlerite war crimes against mankind. They will not be forgotten or forgiven, nor will those who committed them."
His letter followed on a protest made to him by the Polish Bishops against the government's refusal to allow the Cardinal to attend the Polish 1,000-year celebrations in Rome.