Lions in Budapest
The evening of Thursday, May 8, 2025, found me at a film screening at the Danube Institute on the Buda side of Budapest. At 6:17, as the event was wrapping up, my husband texted me the news that Catholics the world over were waiting to hear: we have a new pope. Who is it, I replied? He didn’t know. Nobody knew. All we knew was that bells all over Budapest were peeling and peeling, and that our new pope was preparing for his first public appearance as the 267th successor of St. Peter.
There’s a pause between the glorious words—habemus papam—and the new pope’s arrival on the Balcony overlooking St. Peter’s square. At that moment, Catholics everywhere are praying for their new pope. We all know where he is. He is in the Vatican, in the room of tears, praying for the strength to carry the cross that’s been laid on his shoulders. We pray for him, in joyful expectation. But we don’t yet know his name. The anonymity won’t last long, but while it lasts, we hold our breath. I walked home that evening—across the Chain Bridge—and as smooth beads slipped through my fingers Ave by Ave, wind rushed along the Danube.
Great stone lions guard each end of the Chain Bridge, stoic and silent. They survived both world wars. They were there when the Hapsburg Empire fell. They flanked Miklós Horthy, on his white horse, riding into Budapest to popular acclaim. They saw Romanians, then Germans, then Russians invade and occupy the city. And since they were installed in 1852—during the reign of Pope Pius IX—they’ve seen the election of twelve new popes.
Crossing the bridge, flanked by the lions, praying for the new pope, I could feel what can only be described as the gathering of the pride. Cardinals of ages past from every corner of the globe had gathered in Heavenly conclave above the waiting church on earth. The princes of the church militant gathered in the Sistine Chapel had made their choice.
Fifty years ago, one such prince lived in Budapest. But so far as I can gather, he never went to a conclave with his brother cardinals. He had received his cardinal’s hat on February 18, 1946, from Pope St. Pius XII with the words “Among the thirty-two [new cardinals], you will be the first to suffer the martyrdom whose symbol this red color is.” The Pope’s words were prophetic. While the church’s princes gathered to elect Pope John XXIII in 1958 and then Pope Paul VI in 1963, József Cardinal Mindszenty was a prisoner.
Mindszenty is well-known in the United States, and he is much beloved in Hungary. Statues of the great Hungarian cardinal appeared everywhere: in St. Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest, at Maria Remete, and in Máriapócs (which we have yet to visit). Keen to learn more about the prisoner-priest, I visited Mindszenty’s tomb in Esztergom last fall—a place that Pope John Paul II also visited when he arrived in Hungary on August 16, 1991. In December, I read Mindszenty’s Memoirs.
As I read, the man who appeared from the pages pointed persistently to Christ. Because of his outspoken opposition to Soviet aggression towards the Church and the Hungarian people, Mindszenty was arrested, tortured, and nearly killed. He spent eight years in Soviet prison until Hungarian freedom fighters released him from captivity in October of 1956 and brought him triumphantly to Budapest. Mindszenty was the Hungarian primate—the man traditionally tasked with leading Hungary in the event that a president or prime minister was not available to do the job. As primate, Mindszenty had spiritual authority over the Catholic Church in Hungary, and he felt uniquely responsible for the Hungarian people.
He was the consummate shepherd, writing of his vocation that “[t]he true priest engaged in the care of souls—even if he is held to be an outmoded type—considers himself responsible for the souls entrusted to him. His sense of responsibility weighs heavily upon him, and he will try to protect his flock from all perils and all obstacles.”
When Soviet tanks came rolling back into Budapest on November 4, 1956, Mindszenty was in the Parliament square. He ran to the Embassy—to American soil—on the urging of friends, and the Embassy took him in before the Soviets could kill him. Unwilling to leave his homeland, Mindszenty remained inside the embassy for the next fifteen years. The Soviets couldn’t arrest him on embassy soil without triggering a major international incident. Mindszenty couldn’t leave without risking rearrest.
I’ve walked from Parliament to the Embassy, retracing the route Mindszenty must have run. It’s a five-minute walk along tree-lined cobbled streets. Seventy years ago, Soviets with guns marched down those same streets, past bullet-riddled houses, rubble, and the bleeding bodies of the fallen. The difference is beyond imagining.
During his years in American pseudo-custody, Mindszenty prayed. He paced in the embassy courtyard. He said Mass. He wrote letters, read books, and he wrote his Memoirs. And most of all, he suffered with his people. The shepherd could not leave his sheep, so he remained voluntarily behind bars, looking out sorrowfully at his beloved Hungary.
Eventually, the Vatican worked out a deal with Soviet leadership and allowed Mindszenty to leave for Rome, a decision he made at the Pope’s behest. He died in exile in Vienna four years later, unable to return home until after the regime change. But in life and in death, Mindszenty’s heart remained in Hungary with his people. The room where Mindszenty spent so many years is still part of the embassy, and I had occasion to visit. There’s a portrait of Mindszenty there, and I think it’s a good likeness. It captures the careworn worry and fierce love of a shepherd walking patiently behind Christ on the Via Dolorosa.
On May 1, 1991, Mindszenty’s remains were taken in a solemn funeral procession from the St. Laszlo Chapel in the Basilica of Mariazell in Austria and reinterred on May 4, 1991, in Hungary, in the crypt of the Esztergom Basilica. Home. Mindszenty’s final wish had been fulfilled: that “When Moscow’s star of unbelief has disappeared from over the kingdom of Our Lady and St. Stephen, then take my body to the crypt of Esztergom basilica.”
Following Christ cost Mindszenty dearly. The princes of the church pay for their allegiance to the Lord, sometimes in blood. That’s why their robes are red. Daily, they remember martyrdom. Pope Leo XIV has been called from the midst of that brave company. His Via Dolorosa has already begun.
But thanks be to God, the Pope is not alone. That’s what was impressed upon me on the walk home, praying for a pope I didn’t yet know. Bishops and cardinals, priests and popes—a vast company—stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder. There’s Augustine, lionlike, eyes ablaze with the untamed truth. And by his side, Ignatius, facing wild beasts fearlessly, gazing fixedly on the bread of sacrifice. Priests, bishops, and cardinals, in a long line stretching back to the Cenacle Room raise their hands in blessing. Swaths of the faithful from here to Heaven raise the roof with cheering prayers. And tall among that company, at home at last, stands Hungary’s heroic Cardinal Mindszenty.
Thank you, Evelyn, for this beautiful reflection. Your visit to the U.S. Embassy—and your words—are a blessing. The portrait you mention, which hangs in my office, is a silent witness. Not a day passes that I don’t draw strength from the Cardinal’s example. Ave by Ave, we go forward—grateful for the witness of the saints, past and present, and for you. RP