BUDAPEST (HUNGARY)
The Tablet [Market Harborough, England]
December 28, 2024
By Alexander Faludy
Fr András Pajor, a prominent advocate of the ruling Fidesz party’s “political Christianity”, was accused of abuse by former altar boys.
The sexual abuse crisis gripping the Catholic Church in Hungary has expanded to include the Archdiocese of Esztergom-Budapest, headed by the Hungarian primate Cardinal Péter Erdő.
Attention previously focused on a wave of suspensions and prosecutions of priests in the Archdiocese of Kalocsa-Kecskemét, which emerged over the autumn. But on 5 December, news broke of canonical and police investigations into Fr András Pajor, a priest in Budapest.
Fr Pajor is a prominent advocate of the ruling Fidesz party’s “political Christianity”. In 2023 he received Hungary’s Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit for his “role in youth education”.
Pajor has long urged Christians to vote for the governing Fidesz-KDNP alliance. More recently, he has also become notable as a spreader of Russian propaganda, claiming in a YouTube video about the Ukraine war that since 2022 some 35,000 Russian children had been kidnapped “for paedophiles in the West”.
Former altar boys from Pajors’ parish, however, have told a different story. Speaking anonymously to independent Hungarian outlet Válasz Online, they claimed he frequently made them strip naked, inspected their genitals intimately with his hands and gave them full body massages.
The priest was identified by Válasz after the Archdiocese of Esztergom-Budapest released a statement noting a complaint against an unamed priest in the capital. The statement reported that the cleric had been suspended from parochial ministry while under investigation. Further, it reported, Cardinal Erdő “subsequently dismissed the parish priest concerned from his ecclesiastical duties and retired him”.
It said the latter measure was at the priest’s “own request, on account of his age and state of health”.
Observers welcomed this evidence of swift internal action by the archdiocese, and the referral to secular authorities, as a sign of improved practice. Some, however, were concerned by the tone of church communications.
A statement from the Hungarian bishops’ conference on 4 December acknowledged a need to repent “for sins committed” but offered victims no direct apology.
The statement also struck a defensive tone. “News reports of sexual offences against children indicate that they are present in many sectors of society, but often give the impression that they are committed only by clergy,” it claimed.