Joszef Cardinal Mindszenty (1892-1975)

IT HAS OFTEN been said that ours is an antiheroic age. Nonetheless, Christians have had their share of martyrs in the 20th century. Men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Alexander Solzenhitsyn and thousands of other nameless Christians have defied totalitarian persecution; many have died for doing so. Few men have borne more eloquent and courageous witness to the Christian faith in the face of tyranny than Joszef Cardinal Mindszenty.

Following the German occupation of Hungary during World War II, Father Mindszenty harbored Jews in his palace and relentlessly denounced the Nazis from the pulpit until his arrest in 1944. After the war, Mindszenty became primate of Hungary and by 1948 was leading opposition to the Communist regime's plans to nationalize Church-operated schools and set up a Hungarian Church independent of-Rome. Offered as safe conduct out of Hungary by the government. Mindszenty refused, declaring. "God has ordained my fate and I give myself into his hands." Soon after he was arrested and tortured for 29 days before he finally "confessed" to trumped-up charges of treason and other crimes.

Imprisoned for the next seven years, four of them in solitary confinement, Mindszenty was released by freedom fighters in the 1956 uprising, but the arrival of Soviet troops force him to flee to the American legation in Budapest. Citing what he regarded as his duty as prince primate and as a patriot to remain in his homeland, Mindszenty stayed there for 15 years, writing, studying, and celebrating mass daily. He resisted the Vatican's pleas that the he leave until in 1971 a detente-minded President Nixon joined Pope Paul VI in asking him to leave. An embittered Mindszenty surrendered, entering into exile in Vienna.

For a quarter of a century, Cardinal Mindszenty symbolized the fundamental incompatibility of Christianity and totalitarianism, whether Nazi or Communist. His death of heart failure last Tuesday not only ended a stirring drama of Christian martyrdom, but in a sense, marked the final stage of an uncompromising view of Communism that has almost disappeared in the West. The source of his greatness, however, lay not in popular acceptance but, as in Thomas More's case, in "his willful indifference to realities which were obvious to quite ordinary contemporaries." The cross he bore--his love of God and freedom--has been lifted at last from his willing shoulders. For those who have ears to hear, his witness remains.