President Novák: Hungarian nation “together in spirit” – UPDATED

Although fragmented in various communities, the Hungarian nation is “together in spirit” to the present day, President Katalin Novák said at the consecration of the new Hungarian Reformed church in Marsden, Australia, on Sunday.

Novák acknowledged members of the local Hungarian community for fostering and enriching their Hungarian identity and Hungarian language, and for passing on that identity to their children in their church, communities and families.

The Hungarian community has held together to show, in Australia, too, that there is not only a Hungarian present, but a Hungarian future, she said.

While churches are being repurposed or demolished in Western Europe, some 3,200 churches have been renovated and 200 built in areas in which Hungarians live, she added.

Novák said Hungarians were bound together by their Hungarian identity, the Hungarian language and their shared Christian faith.

Bishop Zoltán Balog of the Reformed Church in Hungary, who delivered the sermon at the service on Sunday, said the new church was “built with the sacrifice of local Hungarians”, adding that they had financed 80 percent of the investment cost.

Novák also participated at the inauguration of the renovated Hungarian House in Marsden.

HERE is an article about Novák’s trashed interview with Politico. HERE is our article about the president’s visit in Papua New Guinea.

Novak in Australia: Families ‘crucial for renewal’- UPDATE

“Families are of paramount importance in terms of renewal and survival,” President Katalin Novák said at a service held marking Reformation Day in Sydney on Tuesday. “It is children that make us continuously renew ourselves and it is they who renew families, thus making the family a basis for survival and renewal,” the president said. “Families are considered in Hungary as of eternal value,” Novák said, adding that “all Hungarian children, no matter where in the world they may be born, are recognised [as Hungarian].”

Referring to Hungary’s system of granting preferential citizenship to ethnic kin, Novák said the number of “Hungarians enjoying their Hungarian citizenship once more” has now reached 1.1 million.

Concerning Reformation Day, the president said Christians and specifically Christian decision-makers had a duty to recognise and distinguish “that which is of eternal value and that which can be and should be renewed”.

Hungarians consider their nation, language, faith, national, linguistic, faith and gender as of eternal value, she said. These cannot be chosen or replaced, she said, adding that though Hungarians renew themselves, they remain who they are.

Novák noted that alongside, her official meetings in Australia, she had also met with local Hungarians, marked the anniversary of the 1956 anti-communist uprising in Melbourne and inaugurated a church and a community centre in Marsden. She is scheduled to meet with diaspora Hungarians in Sydney as well.