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Tens of thousands rally against Hungary's Orban after sex abuse pardon scandal
In Hungary, the biggest political scandal in years has been unfolding over the last two weeks, and has included the resignation of the (ceremonial) president of the republic, Katalin Novák. The linked article is useful but I'll sum up what we know for now.
As you may know, the government under Viktor Orbán has used protecting children as a big political topic in the last few years, they changed the law to be stricter with pedophile crimes and also blurred the whole issue of LGBTQ materials aimed at children with the topic of pedophilia. Including TV ads, billboards, a national "child protection referendum", mandating wrapping books that discuss homosexuality in plastic foil in bookstores to protect kids etc.
In front of this backdrop, news got out two weeks ago that the president of the republic had pardoned a certain Endre K., who was sentenced to 3 years and 4 months for his involvement in a pedophilia case as an accomplice. Endre K was the deputy director of an orphanage in Bicske, a town not far from Budapest. For years, the director, János V. molested boys living there, for which he was sentenced to 8 years prison. Endre K. knew about it and helped the director, including forcing the kids to revoke their police testimonies (which resulted in the case being dropped for some time until more reports came in). According to court documents, he even drafted the statement for the kids stating that the director did not molest them.
One of the few real powers of the largely ceremonial president is to give pardons, with no need to provide any justification, and the decisions are not made public by default. This pardon was one of about two dozen that she issued on one day in April 2023 on the occasion of the papal visit to Hungary (back then she had cited the tradition to issue pardons broadly when the pope visits). Endre K was already in house arrest at the time of the pardon and had a mere 9 more months to go.
It's important to know that, while the role of the president is officially independent of the government, Katalin Novák used to be a minister in Viktor Orbán's cabinet and was put into her new position by Orbán (who controls a 2/3 supermajority in parliament).
The only reason that the pardon got public is that Endre K. had already appealed to the Curia (supreme court) before the pardon (not an actual appeal, but a complaint). And despite the pardon, the Curia legally had to make a decision. They upheld the lower court's ruling but noted that the defendant got pardoned in the meantime, and this court ruling became public in September 2023, but apparently nobody in the wider public or media noticed this. However there is a professional journal for Hungarian lawyers that every few months summarizes bigger rulings and cases that happened in Hungary, and this case got included in the January 2024 issue. A lawyer read this and notified a major left-wing news portal, 444.hu, who published the story and asked the president's office for comment.
At first, the president simply repeated that "there is no pardon for pedophiles" including posting this sentence to social media, implicitly emphasizing that Endre K was not a pedo himself just an accomplice. The government aligned media did not know how to react at first. Some of them tried to defend the guy or said the president must have had her reasons etc., but most just remained quiet and likely kept monitoring the public sentiment.
It took several days until Viktor Orbán announced in a Facebook video that he is proposing a constitutional amendment that would prevent the president from pardoning crimes committed against children.
Three days later, the president resigned and admitted she made a mistake but did not share her prior reasoning.
But the story did not stop there because pardon requests are brought to president by the minister of justice and the president's decision has to be counter-signed by the minister to become effective. The then minister, Judit Varga, was now preparing for a new role, heading the party list of Orbán's Fidesz for this June's European Parliament elections. Simultaneous to the resignation of the president, Judit Varga announced she is resigning from all her political positions and will withdraw from public life. As her reason, she only said she followed a 25 year old practice of always counter signing presidential pardons, but she would take the political responsibility for this (it's is true that refusing to counter sign is extremely rare, but there was indeed such a case about 25 years ago). (Side story: after her resignation, Judit Varga's ex-husband who was also part of Fidesz circles and led state companies, has turned on the govt and started to talk about internal corruption cases, and is promising more spicy info to come.)
After days of public confusion and speculation as to why this pardon was actually granted, it started to emerge that the most likely reason is Endre K's good connections to the Reformed (Calvinist) Church in Hungary. Namely, president Katalin Novák has been a long-time protege of Zoltán Balog, the bishop presiding over the synod of the church (the main guy of the church), who by the way also happens to have been a minister in Orbán's cabinet previously. It turns out he was pushing the idea of pardoning Endre K, but once the initial news broke, Balog announced on social media he will take a few weeks to retreat to a monastery to pray (as it turns out, in Austria).
Balog couldn't pray for long though because after a few days the synod ordered him back to Budapest to explain himself. A vote of confidence affirmed his position, though this vote was a bit fishy as it didn't involve the bishops, just lower ranking people. His refusal to resign caused a big stir in the church, even the bishop leading the largest district publicly asked him to resign. Even notorious pro-government journalists urged him to resign.
Meanwhile several youtubers and media influences announced a big protest to today evening at 6 PM in Budapest, to which lots of other artists, and famous people joined.
Fresh news while typing this: Zoltán Balog has finally (4 days after the initial vote confirming him) resigned a few minutes before the start of the big protest. He says he made a big mistake but "I asked for mercy. I wanted mercy for someone" (Note that the Hungarian word kegyelem can be translated as any of pardon, mercy or clemency). He claims to have believed the person was innocent.
Now, it's also good to know that the Reformed Church is politically quite close to the government. All churches rely on state funding but Orbán himself, former president Novák and the speaker of the Parliament László Kövér are all members of the Reformed (Calvinist) Church. It is also the case that Bicske, where the orphanage is, is a neighbor town to Orbán's birthplace Felcsút, so Endre K might have used connections on that path too, though the government has denied that Orbán knew about the pardon before the news appeared publicly.
Orbán will hold his big annual ("year evaluation") speech tomorrow (planned a long time ago), and it will be the first time he speaks since Novák resigned.
Speculation time. It's all very strange. Some speculate that the case was not accidentally found by a lawyer but it may be some kind of orchestrated thing. Perhaps for delaying ratifying Sweden's NATO membership? For generally withholding military support from Ukraine? I'm skeptical and believe it can be a coincidence. Most likely Zoltán Balog felt powerful enough to push this without telling Orbán and thought it wouldn't be public so whatever. But it's a horrible picture, Orbán would have been crazy to approve this, it was 9 months house arrest! And for what? Now his own church is associated with a pedophilia case. It's Orbán's worst communication nightmare. He always claims that Christian illiberal democracy will defend Hungarian families and kids from woke LGBTQ pedophiles. Others say this is now bringing to surface internal cracks and factional fights within Orbán's party. The fact that the pardon was offocially issued on the occasion of the papal visit is the cherry on top.
So now Orbán has to find a new president, a new person to lead the list for the EU election and the elections for mayors and local governments will also happen in June, while they don't yet even have a candidate for Budapest's lord mayor. This is the most difficult situation they have been for many years.
Isn't this good? If pedophiles are pardoned and there's a massive fracas where people are forced to resign because it goes against the will of the people, that's democracy working as it should. In the US they pardon all kinds of creeps and weirdoes. Trump pardoned, amongst other people, a fraudster who then committed even more fraud: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/convicted-con-man-was-pardoned-trump-charged-fraud-rcna95172
This pardon happened almost a year ago but since pardons are not public they were going to get away with it. It only got public through a weird turn of events that a later court ruling referred to the pardon. But if the guy hadn't appealed to a higher court, the pardon would have remained secret forever.
Basically, it's good that these people resigned but the whole ordeal revealed that connections to the government circles is a literal get out of jail free card. That if your family has good church connections, you can get the church leader, who used to be a cabinet minister, to push the president to give a pardon. So it's more like, who knows what else they routinely do as favors based on connections. Who else have they pardoned and for what?
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Okay, this is obviously a very minor point, but a Calvinist church... with a monastery?
Also, bishops? I thought the Reformed had Elders, not bishops (which are a papist custom). I looked them up and the Reformed Calvinists in Hungary do have a Presbyterian polity.
I think this is a translation issue, as "bishop" and "elder" seem to be used interchangeably for the highest offices, but the English version of the website definitely says "elders" who seem to be the highest lay persons, as well as bishops who are the highest church ministers. I don't think it's the same as bishops within hierarchical churches, though, and may be a hold-over from Catholicism before the Reformation in Hungary?
And here's the guy himself, and he's certainly not dressing like a bishop (in fact, given that liturgical purple shirt, I'd have taken the guy on the right, the lay elder, to be the bishop): Zoltán Balog – Presiding Bishop, Ministerial President of the General Synod of the RCH.
As to the Austrian monastery, since Calvinists don't have similar institutions and he needed somewhere to lie low out of the public eye for a while, he may have had contacts that he used to get him there:
Though I don't know enough about Hungarian history, there's an odd reference here:
Possibly this was a monastery taken over during the Reformation and the buildings repurposed. Anyway, for once it's not a Catholic sex scandal, interesting to see it happening in one of the Protestant churches with married clergy and lay people in positions of authority and all the rest of the things we are told the Church should adopt so as to stop sex abuse scandals!
Protestant sex scandals are if anything more common than catholic ones.
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I think you have to make a distinction here between the leaders of the Radical Reformation and those of the Magisterial Reformation. The radical reformers wanted to fundamentally reshape the church, shed the theological and aesthetic accoutrements of 1,500 years, and move back to a pure, primitive form of Christianity. The magisterial reformers saw themselves as still very much a continuation of the medieval church; their goal was to keep as much as possible while fixing only those things that were clearly broken. I suppose you could liken it to two people being given a shitty piece of code. One decides the best approach is to tweak it as necessary but otherwise to make as few changes as possible, while the other decides the best approach is to start from scratch.
You mentioned that the confessional Protestants in America take their confessions’ ideas on church order more seriously than their European counterparts. I won’t speak to the Reformed, but at least among Anglicans and Lutherans, that’s just not the case. Anglicans don’t have an agreed-upon set of confessions to draw on, but they universally have bishops, while the Lutheran confessions explicitly say that bishops are fine:
In Germany, all but a couple of bishops opposed the Reformation, so the Lutherans changed their governance structure to eliminate bishops. In the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, the bishops were split, so those churches were able to continue on with the same structure as before.
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From a Lutheran perspective (and all Finns are by culture at least a bit Lutheran) there's nothing strange about it. Luther did the correct amount of reforming; the reformers after him started doing weird stuff and all of that spun out of control and that resulted to 50,000 weird sects and also the United States of America.
It's probably best to think of the Nordic/English state churches less as having a strict confession and more like just the Church of [Country]. That's how they all were basically established, as far as I know - first you had the kings deciding to detach their national church from Rome (bishops and all) and then, in the Nordic countries, they (haltingly, with a bit of a back-and-forth movement like what I described here), they adopted Lutheranism as the formal confession of that church. Technically it wouldn't be impossible for them to de-Lutheranize - that's what Rome spent decades (centuries) trying to get them to do, still does in a way.
My impression was that he was fine with it, but didn't think it necessary, and the reason that he didn't end up with bishops is that the Protestants generally failed to attract bishops to their cause. But in Sweden, which went Lutheran, it was done top-down enough (like England) that they managed to keep the bishops.
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Luther was in a strange position, he was more like The Last Catholic than being The First Protestant. He had a very mystical bent to his theology, which is partly why he hated the (stultified version of) Thomism which was big at the time. A bit like Henry VIII, he didn't want much more than "The Pope should agree with me" and he'd have been happy enough to leave things much as he found them, if only that had gone his way 😁
The merry band of Reformers soon fell out, and had to do some desperate papering over the theological cracks, because all of the big names had their own views on everything, and backed that up with "I'm an expert theologian" (Luther liked using 'I have a doctorate' to smack down opposition). Often the only thing on which they all agreed was "the Pope is wrong and we're not Romans". So yes, bishops are Lutheran, it was the Reformed/Calvinists who went 'the only church office is pastor and then elder'.
The Low Church and Pietist movements which came later probably were influenced more in that direction, and of course the way things developed in America put their own spin on things.
Not exactly. There were major Thomists at the time (he interacted with some noteworthy ones, most importantly Cajetan, who was perhaps the most important Thomist in history), but I believe in northern Europe Aquinas wasn't terribly popular, and people more frequently made use of other authors, such as Scotus or Biel. The mystic part is fairly accurate. He republished Theologia Deutsch, a work written centuries earlier due to the influence of German Dominican mystics, in which work you can pretty clearly see the influence on Luther's thought, with its emphases on humility and the worthlessness of the self (probably not the best summary, but that's from memory).
True, and not true. Henry VIII did not solely want that the pope would agree with him, but did actually have committed religious beliefs. He was named Defensor Fidei by the pope for his writings against Luther, arguing that there are actually seven sacraments. Henry maintained his belief in the seven sacraments his entire life and tried to crack down on the Protestants at some points, even after he'd broken with Rome. I'm not extremely knowledgeable on it, but I'd believe that Henry's actions could have been sincere as to what he thought right, not merely a power grab.
Luther definitely did have a bunch of things he wanted corrected, though (far more than Henry). There's a sense in which he merely wanted the pope to agree with him, but what he wanted agreement on was far more extensive, and more about teaching (as well as the moral reform of the church). His thoughts on the pope changed fairly quickly at the beginning, going from that the pope was good etc. but not able to do quite as much as was claimed re:indulgences, to thinking that the pope was the antichrist. (but even at that later point, in 1520, when he thought that the papacy was the Antichrist, he still would have reconciled had the pope just fixed things—stop seizing power, clean out the corruption, and correct the problematic teachings and practices.)
This is overstated. Assuming you're not talking about the anabaptists, there was a general consensus on quite a lot, and a lot of the theologians were more conciliatory than Luther. Calvin wanted to be considered Lutheran and wanted to reconcile, and there were others pushing for unity and moderation (e.g. Melanchthon, Philp of Hesse, Bucer). But Luther and some others were prone to be scathing rather than charitable, and did not think Zwingli's view within the range of being acceptable on the Lord's Supper. (Though Luther did put up with some in-between stances like Melanchthon's or Bucer's, if I remember correctly).
Sort of true, as German Lutherans didn't really have bishops, because the existing bishops in Germany weren't convinced (not sure to what extent this was motivated by the power they'd lose if they did turn Lutheran). Swedish Lutherans do, as the turn to Lutheranism came from the king, allowing the bishops to be preserved.
I'm not sure to what extent presbyterianism was considered to be instituted jure divino. I know that belief was common in England when there were conflicts with the puritans, but I don't know whether that was something earlier, or whether it was merely something they recommended. I was under the impression that they got along pretty well with the Anglicans for a while. (e.g. Vermigli was in England for some time and worked with Cranmer)
Oh, Henry definitely thought he was a theologian; there's an account in MacCulloch's biography of Thomas Cromwell of Henry personally presiding over a heresy trial, all dressed in white, to argue theology with the accused. It wasn't simply about a power grab, I agree; that's why he was so upset when things did not go his way. He wanted this thing, he had convinced himself he was in the right on this thing, he had been promised this thing, why wasn't he getting this thing? That's why Wolsey fell, when his arrogance and power-grabbing weren't balanced out by being able to deliver the divorce for Henry, and why Henry got his pet scholars and theologians to scrabble up a decision that agreed with him on the rightness of the divorce. He couldn't see why the Pope just wouldn't agree with him, so the Pope must be in the wrong, and the genuine Reformers used that to get Henry to implement certain amount of reform in the new English Church.
That's also why Henry was so angry with the likes of Thomas More and the Carthusians; if people with good reputations at home and abroad were disagreeing with him, this was painting him as being wrong. And he was the King, and the King could never be wrong, so they had to pay for that. He was even-handed about burning as heretics both Catholics and Protestants who went too far from what he considered correct:
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It's certainly political. The reformed church is seen as the "Hungarian national" religion, while German protestants living in Hungary were Lutheran. During the Ottoman occupation when Hungary was divided, the Hungarian ruling princes of Transylvania were Calvinist (or sometimes Unitarian) while the Habsburgs leading Royal Hungary werr Catholic. And some nationalities like Serbs and Romanians living in Hungary were orthodox. Nationality and denomination were and are strongly correlated. Most lay people have no idea about the denominational details, they just get born into whichever church their ethnic community belongs to.
There are curious cases like the Hungarian-speaking orthodox in Transylvania who used to be Greek Catholics (and still earlier they had been Eastern Orthodox) but Greek Catholicism was banned during communism and their churches were converted to Orthodoxy. After the fall of communism in Romania, religious freedom was introduced, so the Greek Catholics got legalized again, but now these Hungarian communities are reluctant to convert back to Greek Catholicism, because they care more about their priests than the denomination and the liturgy is similar anyway. And in these areas actually religious affiliation is often the primary identity. So being orthodox, some of these people think they are "Hungarian speaking Romanians", since Orthodoxy is equated with Romanian.
Note however that political and historic events are much stronger in determining where someone ends up than theological fine points. It's just weird to belong to a church of a different ethnicity in these areas.
Hungarian religious history is definitely something I know much less about than what happened further west, so I appreciate the outline. What familiarity I have with Hungarian religious history is really... messy. I do recall being very confused when I learned about the Hungarian Crown being a gift from the Byzantines to a monarch who remained in communion with the Pope and on good terms with Constantinople well after the communication between the two fell apart. It sounds from your description like that complex situation has continued into the present where Latin Catholics, Eastern Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants are all significant in their own ways, which is rather a fascinating religious landscape reflecting the ethnic diversity of the country.
That's definitely everybody everywhere, people who study these things and seek something out are absolutely the minority. It's significant that the outcome of the Peace of Westphalia wasn't exactly "everyone gets to decide their own religion" but "every prince gets to decide the religion of his kingdom," though with toleration for dissenting subjects. And as kingdoms evolved into nation-states, this does seem to have developed into closely-knit national churches.
One reason for this diversity is the geographic location as the buffer zone between Western Catholicism / Habsburg / HRE, Byzantine Christianity as well as the Ottoman Muslim influence in the occupied area and the Ottoman-aligned Transylvania (the Hungarian princes of Transylvania rather oriented towards the Ottomans to oppose the Austrian Habsburg push for taking the country).
The Islamic influence was mainly that they simply didn't care which flavor of Christianity people followed as long as they paid the tax, so the counter-reformation didn't happen in Eastern Hungary and Transylvania and protestants could go to extremes in peace (like Unitarianism that outright denies the Trinity and Christ's divinity).
Today's landscape in Hungary (2022) is (note that 40% declined to answer) 28% Roman Catholic, 2% Greek Catholic, 10% Calvinist, 2% Lutheran. Orthodox practically nonexistent (0.16%).
I think, based on cursory reading, it's more a combination of post-Communism and Western secularisation; people weren't raised to go to church, the church didn't have too much influence, so there's a 'national' church now (the Reformed) but nobody much goes to church or gets involved past married/buried in church (if they even go for that). A bit like the Church of England, if I can be mildly snarky, which is the state church but has moved to position itself as 'the church of all the people of the nation', which means including Catholics, Muslims, Jews, and atheists as well because being a state church they represent the entire population (yeah, I know, that's pretty shaky but they have to maintain relevance somehow). Take these figures from 2022:
For comparison purposes, the population of England (not Great Britain or the UK) is around 57 million.
I don't get the impression that Hungarian Calvinism is like American Episcopalianism, which was always a small church and did lean heavily towards 'the elite', hence its continuing pretensions to 'the National Cathedral' and so forth.
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Not at all, actually it's more the religion of peasants (whose ancestors are from the east where the Austrians didn't manage to re-catholicize them). Orbán himself comes from a simple background. But also, as Hungary was ruled by the Austrian Habsburgs who led the counter reformation, being protestant was a kind of defiant national opposition against the Austrian rulers.
When I say they are a "national" church, I mean more that they tend to be more patriotic and nation-focused, they even sing the national anthem in their liturgy sometimes, they use the national flag more, etc. Since there is no pope above them outside the nation, nobody stops this type of thing, so as a Reformed Christian himself, nationalism and religion are strongly connected in Orbán's mind too.
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I don't think the argument for married clergy etc. is that there's never going to be sex scandals - priests are human and as such sinners - after all - but rather that the Catholic tradition of nonmarried clergy means the position tends to attract a particular type of a person - ie. those who aren't attracted to adult women, pedos being in this category alongside homosexuals and asexuals - and that this in turn tends to eventually leave an increasing mark on the entire church hierarcy, its culture of silence, ways of shunting cases aside etc.
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My impression of the "orthodox" Calvinist interpretation is that the words "elder", "bishop", and "pastor" in the New Testament all mean the exact same thing.
Does "pastor" show up in the New Testament? My understanding is only "presbyter" and "episkopos" show up, alongside references to deacons.
‘Presbyteros’ ‘diakonos’ and ‘episkopos’ show up in the Pauline epistles; the translations are literally ‘elder’ ‘servant’ and ‘overseer’ respectively but catholic and orthodox Christians think this refers to priests deacons and bishops(Protestants vary). Jesus in a few parables uses a word meaning ‘shepherd’ to refer to the general category of church leadership(and pastor is of course Latin for shepherd), but more as a metaphor for the role of church leaders than as a literal title.
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The literal word is "shepherd", but there are some locations where it is clearly referring to some sort of church leader.
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He went to pray in an orthodox monastery, called Maria Schutz. Don't ask why. Here's an fb post of the monastery where he's the guy on the right. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php/?photo_id=785558250264913
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Uh, was his crime listed as ‘accomplice to pedophilia’ or was it listed as ‘hampering a police investigation’ or something similar?
According to here, this is the charge:
So whether he knew or not that the director was abusing the children, he did help cover it all up by getting them to retract their claims.
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Yeah, to me, it sounds more like "obstruction of justice" is what he is technically guilty of, it's what he did it in service of that understandably gets people's hackles up.
Pressuring victims of anything to retract their claims gets my hackles up. There are forms of "obstruction of justice" that don't outrage me, where people resist arrest, or destroy evidence when they get caught doing something illegal. Like, you shouldn't do that, but I get it. But witness tampering, threats, corruption? That's unacceptable, regardless of what it's in service of.
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Coercion or duress, I'm not sure about the English term. Basically blackmail in plain words. He made the kids revoke their police testimony by threatening them with various things. Media reports he threatened that a pair of siblings who lived there would be separated and sent to different orphanages.
He wrote text for them to sign, which the court documents cite as (my translation) "I made it up that we had jerked off my genital together and that he had done that to other children. The truth is that he didn't pull my pants down and didnt touch it and didn't jerk it off."
One of the kids later committed suicide as well.
So it sounds like maybe she thought he had covered up eg embezzlement and was doing a political ally a dubiously legal favor.
The president obviously receives extensive documentation about the case, including the letter by the person requesting the pardon (it appears that this was the wife of the convict). It also includes a recommendation by the minister of justice. The government is currently refusing to confirm whether the minister recommended granting the pardon or not, but according to press sources the minister did not recommend the pardon, but she still counter signed it afterwards.
As one of Novák's advisors, it is rumored that Balog was very often in the presidential office to a degree that was already annoying the staff, and Novák was for long a "mentee" of Balog.
The pedophile director himself, who molested boys between 2004 and 2016, received a Hungarian Order of Merit (bronze) in 2016 from the previous president, on the recommendation of Balog. And apparently the pardoned man's father was a lay leader in the reformed church as well.
Based on currently available media reports by investigative journalists, it seems that Orbán was actually kept out of the loop here (one man can't manage every individual issue after all and must delegate). Probably the family lobbied the church leadership who lobbied Balog who told Novák to sign. Minister Judit Varga (if it's true that she did not support the pardon initially) may have also been left out of the loop and saw no reason to support this based on the documents, but all requests for pardon must be forwarded to the president by the minister. And upon seeing here recommendation overturned she may have assumed higher powers took care of this already so she didn't double check this with Orbán.
Orbán is a masterful Machiavellian and rotates the second line of leadership quite often, so nobody grows to be to autonomous. And he usually picks very trusted people to the president's position. The last one, Áder, for example was his college dorm friend. But he wanted a female president this time so couldnt choose one of the old friends as female politicians are quite rare. And it seems Novák was more loyal to Balog than Orbán himself.
Probably they all thought it's no big deal as it all remains secret anyway and everything routinely gets done through favors and corruption so whatever. And that's usually okay with the public if it's just about stealing public money. But people are very sensitive to pedophilia cases, not unrelated to the government's child protection rhetoric.
So to sum it up, I think it signals people in the second and third lines of power getting too cocky in offering and expecting favors, and Orban needs to cull some of them so they know who's the silverback here. And that he needs to manually control even more things because people even mess up such easy things.
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