Pastoral Visit of Bishop Ferenc Cserháti, Hungarian Mass

Despite doing almost everything entirely in Latin,  St. Mary of Victories Chapel is technically a Hungarian ethnic parish.  On Sunday mornings, a freestanding altar is erected for a single versus populum Mass for this community, and then quickly removed afterwards.

Which brings us to tonight's interesting topic.  Enter Bishop Ferenc Cserháti, Auxiliary Bishop of Esztergom-Budapest, Hungary.  He is charged with the pastoral care of the Hungarian diaspora, and has been travelling the United States visiting Hungarian parishes.  So naturally, being the fluent Hungarian speaker (cough), I was requested to serve for this Mass.  Upon meeting the bishop, my conversation with him, as you can imagine, was very in-depth and extensive:

    Me: "Hello, your Excellency!"

    HE: "Do you speak Hungarian?"

    Me: "No."

Ahem.  Anyway.  The Mass was a Votive Mass in honour of St. Stephen of Hungary, the secondary patron of the chapel.  Since the bishop does not speak English, it originally was going to be said in English by another priest, with the bishop concelebrating.  However, by this evening it had switched to having the bishop as celebrant, with the propers and most of the Mass of the Catechumens in Hungarian, parts of the ordinary in English, and the Mass of the Faithful in Latin.  Juggling that many missals, you can imagine how the altar looked!  (Though it is encouraging to see Latin being used to unite the different groups.)

Ah, the joys of serving Mass in a language you do not understand!  Trying to implement GIRM n. 275a when you cannot even decipher names from the prayers being chanted.  The percutiens mihi pectus ter was still manageable however, by paying very close attention to the pace and flow of the Hungarian Confiteor and anticipating the proper spot to percussum.

Present at the Mass besides for the bishop were the current chaplain as well as three former chaplains.  Since half of the clergy knew Hungarian and all but the bishop spoke English, you can guess which language was used in the sacristy to communicate amongst everyone.  That's right: Italian.  Italian.  As well as the other two.  And German.  The clergy had it under control, but the altar servers were, needless to say, rather confused.

Unfortunately I am not aware of any pictures from the Mass, but I will update this post if I happen to obtain some!

---

Mass heard: 08:30, St. Nicholas; 18:00, St. Mary of Victories

Serving streak: 2 days

Datum S. Ludovici, die XXVII mensis Maii, in festo S. Bedae Venerabilis Confessoris et Ecclesiae Doctoris, anno MMXIII.