Sister Sara Salkahazi beatified.

Budapest -- In the first beatification to take place in Hungary in nearly a thousand years, Sara Salkahazi, a nun honoured by Jewish organizations for saving the lives of dozens of Jews during World War II was beatified on September 17. To reflect on the meaning of this event, the Zenit news agency interviewed Cardinal Peter Erdo, primate of Hungary.

The last beatification in Hungary, he explained, occurred in 1083, a time when no distinction was made between beatification and canonization. This one, taking place in the year of Hungary's jubilee and on the 50th anniversary of the 1956 revolution, was an occasion of great joy.

Asking what it meant to the city of Budapest, Cardinal Erdo pointed out that it meant a woman of today, a thoroughly modern woman, could follow the Christian ideal and be shown to all people as an example of Christian life. Sister Sara, of the Sisters of Social Service, was shot on the banks of the Danube with many people of Jewish origin, a martyr of Christian charity. She gave her life for her neighbours. She hid many persecuted people in her convent and, when this was discovered at the end of 1944, she was arrested and, together with the women she was hiding, shot on the Danube, making the sign of the Cross in the last moment of her life, as a sign of forgiveness.

During the plenary meeting of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences in St. Petersburg from October 5-8, Cardinal Erdo was elected president of the council. The Holy Father had sent a message to the St. Petersburg meeting, expressing the hope that the gathering would witness to the contribution the Catholic Church could make, in fraternal collaboration with other Christian confessions, to the common good of Europe.

Meanwhile, the commemoration of the 1956 revolution in Hungary showed that the transition from dictatorship to democracy is far from complete. In one day, more than 150 people were injured in riots. The Socialist prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, accused Viktor Orban, leader of the conservative opposition, of fuelling "far right" protests. Thousands of antigovernment protesters erected barricades, hurled Molotov cocktails and vandalized cars as they rampaged through the streets of Budapest.

Instead of condemning the rioters, Orban defended them. His Fidesz party said that police, who shot rubber bullets and tear gas at the protesters, had used "brutal and inexplicable force." Amid a string of inflammatory remarks, Orban said in September that a conservative win in local elections "would legitimize an assault against the government."

Fidesz has for years refused to commemorate the anti-Soviet uprising with the Socialists, saying they are direct successors of the Communists who colluded with the Soviets in 1956.