wfn.org | Hungary's Lutherans commemorate, honor Bishop Lajos Ordass

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

(1901-1978)

BUDAPEST, Hungary/GENEVA, March 10, 1998 (lwi) - The Lutheran Church in
Hungary (LCH) recently commemorated one of its former bishops, Dr. Lajos
Ordass, at churchwide level, for the first time. The church honored the
bishop with a book presentation, Feb. 19 in Budapest, and an open forum.
Ordass had been ostracized for decades, almost up until the political
changeover. The commemoration marked two dates: 1948, when an action was
brought against Ordass by the then communist regime, followed by his
removal from office, agreed to by the LCH, and 1978, the year of his death.

In this way, the LCH now officially recognizes and supports the scholastic
work of theologian and writer, Rev. Istvan Szepfalusi, and the
documentation he has compiled since 1982. Szepfalusi is a university
lecturer living in Vienna. With the publication of this fourth volume of
his biography of Ordass, bibliography and documentation by the Lutheran
publishing house in Budapest, his undertaking can be said to have reached a
conclusion.

The volume mostly includes case records, communist party system
instructions, proof of collaboration between state and church and reviews
of articles and books about Bishop Ordass. Ample reference also is made to
the publications of the "Lajos Ordass Society", founded in 1989. As
presiding LCH bishop, Dr. Bela Harmed, and Szepfalusi himself underlined on
the occasion of the book presentation, it now has become possible to
exhaustively "document down to the last detail" the kind of sophistication
with which the former system used to work against the church, reports LWI
correspondent Gottfried Mierau.

Bishop Ordass, elected in 1947 to be an LWF vice-president, was one of the
very few in the Hungarian Lutheran church to have persistently and
courageously resisted state pressure and the communist party system.

*       *       *
Lutheran World Information
Editorial Assistant: Janet Bond-Nash
E-mail: jbn@lutheranworld.org
http://www.lutheranworld.org/