Prime Minister Orbán condoles over death of “monk of the Gulag”

Budapest (MTI) – Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has sent a letter of condolences to Archabbot Asztrik Várszegi of Pannonhalma over the death of Placid Oloffson, a Benedictine monk who spent nine years in a Soviet prison camp, the prime minister’s press chief Bertalan Havasi told MTI.

Born as Karoly Olofsson, Father Placid died at the age of 100 on Sunday evening.

He was arrested in 1946 by the ill-famed Hungarian secret policy AVH, then transferred to the Soviet authorities, which finally sentenced him to ten years in a Gulag camp under trumped-up “terrorism” charges.

Orbán wrote in the letter that “a true representative of Hungarian freedom and European Christian culture has passed away. During his one hundred years, he bravely demonstrated that there is freedom where the Spirit of God is present: in church and the classroom just as in prison and the forced labour camp.”

Source: MTI