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Kuklay, Antal (1932) |
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He was born in Csap (Chop), then part of Czechoslovakia, one of four children in a strongly Catholic family, his father being a cantor and schoolteacher. He completed his secondary education in 1950, having studied at the Piarist school in Sátoraljaújhely and the Reformed secondary school in Sárospatak. He studied for the priesthood in Hejce and Eger, and from 1953 at the central seminary in Budapest. He was ordained in 1955. When the 1956 Revolution broke out, he and his fellow seminarists turned to Cardinal József Mindszenty, who had recently been released from house arrest, to inform him about the activity of the State Office for Church Affairs. On November 3, 1956, Kuklay took part, under the leadership of Egon Turchányi, secretary to Mindszenty, in seizing the archives of the organization, which had come to symbolize the oppressive communist policy towards the churches. After the Soviet intervention on November 4, he was assisted by Budapest law students in getting away. He helped to make a duplicated brochure informing the provincial priesthood of events. He was appointed a curate at Abaújszántó in December and then at Szikszó early in 1957, but was arrested in May that year. He was sentenced in 1958 to ten years' imprisonment in the trial of Turchányi and associates, but freed in 1963, when he moved to his parents in Sárospatak. The State Office for Church Affairs banned him from pastoral work and he did manual work in Sátoraljaújhely Plate Factory and then the Sárospatak Stove Factory. He was later permitted to do scholarly work and began participating as parish librarian in the investigation of Sárospatak parish church. He completed a three-year course in librarianship at the National Széchényi Library, during which time he established the Sárospatak Roman Catholic Church Collection. He was allowed back into the pulpit in 1968. In 1973, he became parish priest of Köröm. In 1985, he obtained a qualification as an art historian. In 1987, the Sárospatak Roman Catholic Church Collection published his book of studies entitled 'On the Edge of the Crater. Thoughts and Selections on the Poetry of János Pilinszky'. |
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Kuklay, Antal: 'Rescuing, conserving and spreading values'
Júlia tour (Hungarian)