Good Friday to become non-working holiday

Budapest, October 14 (MTI) – Good Friday is to be declared a non-working holiday in Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced at the 1956 memorial meeting of the synod of Hungarian Reformed Churches on Friday.

Orbán said next year’s 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation in Europe would be the right time to help believers celebrate Good Friday by declaring it a non-working holiday.

On the subject of the 60th anniversary of Hungary’s anti-Soviet uprising of 1956, the prime minister said, “the cold reality of dictatorship grinds up human dignity, usually leaving emptiness and decreased vigour in its wake.” But in 1956 “our heroes won because… they made us proud”, Orbán said.

Concerning Protestantism, the prime minister said it was a “crucial component of modern European democracy and culture”. He added that “once again it takes courage to tell the simple truth that modern European culture and today’s civic way of life owe their existence to Christianity”.