Gulyas: Preserving St. Stephen’s legacy ‘protecting freedom’

Marking the “1023rd birth anniversary of the Hungarian state”, Gulyas called on Hungarians to show gratitude for “40 lifespans of work and service through which the nation has survived over the centuries”.

“We must study the path behind us so that we do not lose the way ahead,” he said.

Gulyas also highlighted the work of St. Stephen in “choosing Christianity and the West of those times”. He added, however, that “after a thousand years the situation in Europe is such that there is no longer a path to western Europe through Christianity.”

“Whatever has been shared in European faith, culture and thinking has been rejected, forgotten and left behind by western Europe,” he said, adding that Christianity had been “banned from society’s basic principles, laws and politics, allowing an ideology to take over questioning, rejecting and removing all European values.”

At the ceremony, Gulyas, on behalf of President Katalin Novak, handed over the Order of Merit of Hungary, Commander’s Cross, to Istvan Zsolt Gyulai, Olympic and world champion kayaker, head of the Hungarian Olympic Committee, as well as Gabriella Vukovich, retired head of the Central Statistical Office.