„Neznesiteľná“ farnosť ako spôsob perzekúcie kňaza v Hornom Uhorsku na začiatku 20. storočia
The ‘Unbearable’ Parish as a Way of Persecuting a Priest in Upper Hungary at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century:

The Case of Karol Anton Medvecký in Bacúrov

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to present the process of persecution of Slovak Catholic priests in Upper Hungary at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hungarian bishops punished politically active priests by making them forcibly serve in the poorest parishes across all the Hungarian dioceses. It was a strategic way of Hungarianizing the Hungarian church hierarchy, which involved bullying them to morally and socially breaking non­‑Hungarian priests. The article presents the priest Karol Anton Medvecký, who was in a dispute with the Bishop of Banská Bystrica, Wolfgang Radnai. The bishop left Medvecký to work in the parish of Bacúrov for almost ten years, despite many requests for a transfer. The priest in the parish faced unsatisfactory building conditions, thefts from their parishioners, crop failure, economic shortages and isolation. In addition, Radnai did not even provide Medvecký with the position of pastor and paid him late. The bishop kept his own promise and did not transfer Medvecký to a more ‘bearable’ parish. He only left Bacúrov after the founding of Czechoslovakia, when the bishop no longer had official power over him. After the First World War, the situation changed when Medvecký, as a ministerial secretary, personally oversaw the expulsion of Bishop Radnai from Czechoslovakia.

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