Man who would heal Europe.

The career of a remarkable priest shows how much can be accomplished by a man of courage and resolution. We are accustomed to hearing sad stories of the decline of religion in central Europe; it is inspiring to read one account of a man motivated and guided by faith who is doing his best to heal a fractured region of the continent, and who is having great success in doing so.

Each year the editors of the European editions of Reader's Digest nominate someone as Europe's "Man of the Year," and their choice for 1996 was a Hungarian monsignor, Imre Kozma.

In a Digest article, Lawrence Elliott begins with the story of his driving to the besieged town of Vukova in Croatia one dark November night in 1991, seeking to rescue seven monks and thousands of civilians trapped in the city. When he reached the Croatian front line, the soldiers told him that only the commander of the Serbian forces besieging the city could permit its evacution. "But General Raseta won't see you," they said. "He sees no one except his soldiers." Undaunted, Father Imre got on the telephone, working through his network of contacts, and finally got the promise of a five-minute interview with the army commander.

After a nine-hour journey on bumpy roads, he arrived at the Serbian headquarters at 4 a.m. He explained to the general what he was there for: "I want to take the civilians of this town to safety. The war has claimed enough victims." For an hour he pleaded with the general, but Raseta was like a stone wall. Eventually Father Kozma said, "Let me take these people out of here. And I will let the world know that General Raseta is a good officer who knows when to temper duty with mercy." Raseta relented; he was sufficiently moved to grant safe passage to the townspeople, and in a few days most of them were on buses leaving the war zone. Soon after this Serbian guns finished reducing the town to rubble.

Supporting refugees everywhere

Through his fund-raising and lecture tours all over Europe, the United States, and Canada, Elliott writes, this priest has supported refugees in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, and directed the distribution of millions of dollars' worth of food, medical supplies and clothing. Born in 1940, and ordained in 1963, he was assigned to a church in the mining town of Dorog. He was faced with a situation similar to that confronting the nineteenth century French priest, St. Jean Vianney, when he first went to the village of Ars - there was not much religion there. In Father Kozma's case, the situation was complicated by the fact that Hungary was under the domination of a Communist regime which was hostile to religion. At the five masses he celebrated on his first Sunday in his new parish, he counted only 57 worshippers; but within a few months he had the church filled every Sunday. Subsequently, he served for ten years as a priest in the Franciscan Church in Budapest, until the regime declared that he could no longer remain in the priesthood. Finally he was allowed to stay, as long as he moved to Zugliget, in the hills of outer Budapest. His parish there, Holy Family, was similar to his first one - a neglected building in a depopulated parish.

However, this became his first systematized charity. Appalled at the poverty he saw, he organized young men and women into teams which sought out troubled youngsters, the handicapped and the disadvantaged. His reputation spread to the point where, when a group in Germany set up the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service, he was asked to head it. As the name indictates, it has the support of the Knights of Malta; in fact Father Kozma received the Grand Cross of Malta from the Grandmaster of the Order in 1989.

Dismantling the Berlin Wall

In 1989, an official from the West German Embassy in Budapest pleaded for his help: could he provide humanitarian assistance to the influx of refugees from East Germany? Since they could travel to Hungary without a visa, thousands of people were coming to Budapest for "holidays," with the intention of fleeing to the West. Father Imre agreed to help, and set up a tent city in the courtyard of his Holy Family Church. Before long, he and his helpers were sheltering nearly 50,000 East Germans. Eventually the Budapest government allowed the refugees to cross the border into Austria. As Elliott writes, the Berlin Wall had been rendered meaningless, and two months later it would come down. West German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher came to Budapest to present Father Imre with the Grand Cross for Services, the highest honour Germany can bestow on a foreigner. "You were the one who took the first stone out of the Berlin Wall," he said, "and every German thanks you."

Monsignor Kozma (as he has been since 1992) remains a parish priest, who celebrates Mass every day and helps with the teaching at a church school. Bishop Attila Miklos-Hazy, who has responsibility for the spiritual care of Hungarians living outside their homeland and who lives in Toronto, can confirm that the Reader's Digest praise for Kozma was not misplaced: the work he has done and continues to do with refugees is adequate testimonial by itself. But there is also a map of Hungary with Maltese crosses showing where agencies of his Hungarian Maltese Charity Service are located, and the crosses number at least a hundred. The organisation has only about ninety paid staff, but 8,000 regular volunteers and as many as 30,000 others help it carry out its activities. It operates shelters for the homeless, medical centres, pharmacies, soup kitchens, ambulance services, old people's homes, orphanages, and many other types of facilities. It helps to restore churches and to provide schools with furniture. It also goes outside the borders of Hungary to provide aid in Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia. It gives spiritual support for helpers through the regular celebration of the Mass, annual pilgrimages, and a prayer campaign, with a one-hour prayer service every second Friday evening for the spiritual revival of Hungary. Today over 200,000 people participate in these evening services.