International aspects and legislative frameworks regulation of state- church relations in Hungary in the period of the reign of M. Horty.

Abstract

The content and main directions of the development of diplomatic relations between Hungary and the Vatican in the period from 1920 to 1944 are analyzed, as well as the legal basis for regulating the status of religious communities and organizations in the country in this historical era. It was noted that the work on the preparation of the establishment of direct diplomatic relations between Hungary and the Holy See began already at the end of 1918 under extremely difficult foreign policy conditions and at the same time in the conditions of a conflict of interests regarding the right of main patronage. It was a conflict between the attempt of the new Hungarian government to preserve the ancient right of the Hungarian kings to appoint the high priest of the national Catholic Church, on the one hand, and the desire of the Holy See to centralize the decision on this issue, on the other. The importance of solving these and other issues of state-church relations immediately after the First World War was actualized by the fact that in the conditions of the country's search for a new place on the political map of Europe, all current religious and political issues were extremely important for ensuring both social consolidation and internal law and order, as well as protection of Hungarians abroad. Meanwhile, until 1920, the establishment of diplomatic relations was made impossible by the absence of a ruler and government legitimate from the point of view of the Holy See in Hungary. The National Assembly held in February 1920 and the subsequent international legitimization of the power of the regent and the new government ensured rapid progress in solving the issue of establishing diplomatic relations, and already in July of the same year, the Hungarian embassy was officially opened at the Holy See, and in October the first the apostolic nuncio in Budapest handed over the letter of faith to the regent M. Horty. The peculiarities of the Hungarian embassy were that the ambassador to the Holy See was not a clerical person, did not represent the interests of Hungarian citizens, but only the political and religious positions of the Hungarian government. In the mid-1920s, the Hungarian government took certain measures to formalize the ways of maintaining diplomatic relations. It is significant that both sides did not 329 insist on concluding a concordat, although the Holy See concluded 20 new concordats with European countries, particularly Hungarian neighbors, during the 1920s. The reason is that, due to a number of objective circumstances, the prerequisites for signing the concordat between Hungary and the Holy See were objectively shaky and uncertain. At the same time, there is every reason to state that there were generally sincere and friendly relations between the Hungarian government and the Catholic Church in the interwar and postwar period, which in itself reduced the political and legal value of the concordat issue.