On 12 August 2023, the consecration of the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Eszteregnye took place. The liturgy was celebrated by Szabolcs Benedek Fekete, Auxiliary Bishop of Szombathely. In the afternoon, at the invitation of Fr Gottfried Heiter, Viktor Kanász, Research Fellow of the Fraknói Research Group, delivered a lecture on the church’s earlier consecration in 1936.
In his presentation, Kanász reconstructed the events on the basis of a previously unknown body of documents that had remained in private ownership and was entirely unknown to scholarship until now. He discussed the role of József Pehm (later Cardinal Mindszenty), then provost-parish priest of Zalaegerszeg, who performed the consecration on 15 August 1936, and presented several hitherto unpublished letters by Mindszenty preserved in the archival material. Special attention was given to the process of the church’s renovation and to the circumstances surrounding the creation of the new altarpiece painted by Géza Szánthó.
The written version of the lecture will be published next year in the form of a scholarly article.
