The bishops of Hungary and Austria met together for the first time at Mariazell on 20 June. The meeting is reported by the Austrian Catholic press agency Kathpress, which notes that the Austrian bishops held their summer plenary session at the Marian sanctuary from 19 to 21 June, chaired by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. The 20th June was dedicated to a joint communiqué of the two Austrian and Hungarian Bishops’ Conferences. It mentions the “alliance for a Sunday free of work”, the pastoral care of pilgrimages and minorities in both countries and the pastoral ministry to Rom and Sinti communities. The signing of the joint communiqué was followed by a common celebration in public, celebrated by the 21 Hungarian bishops and by the 15 Austrian bishops in the basilica of Mariazell, and presided over by the Hungarian Primate, Cardinal Peter Erdö. As emphasised by the Austrian cardinal, the joint session of Hungarian and Austrian bishops has nothing to do with “nostalgia”, but was “a direct consequence of the Katholikentag of the Catholics of Central Europe that had culminated with the “pilgrimage of peoples” to Mariazell on 22 May 2004. Mariazell is a significant Marian sanctuary both for Austria and for Hungary and has been an important goal of pilgrimage for Hungarians for centuries: indeed it became a symbolic place of spiritual resistance against totalitarianism in the decades of the country’s pro-Soviet puppet regime. In the Basilica, a piece of the barbed wire from the “iron curtain” on the Hungarian frontier recalls the gift of the freedom now regained.
