An American priest of Hungarian and Polish origin, his English bishop in the European Anglican Diocese in Brussels, an Anglican community in Budapest, and a joint ecumenical project with the Hungarian Jesuits to assist the refugees in the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine. Read further for the fruitful results of this most colourful combination.

“The Jesuits taught me how to think.” It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the previous utterance in a man’s life. Namely reverend dr. Frank Hegedűs’s, who completed his undergraduate studies in 1971 at the Jesuit Saint Louis University in the United States, and has been serving as pastor and area dean of Saint Margaret’s Anglican Episcopal Church in Hungary for the past decade. He has had several occasions to work with Hungarian Jesuits, mostly conducting weddings and baptism.

No wonder, when it came to considering an ecumenical partnership to assist the Ukrainian refugees, he immediately thought of the members of the Society of Jesus. Reverend Frank then contacted the Jesuit director of the Hungarian Jesuit Refugee Service, Szabolcs Sajgó SJ, and proposed a professional and financial cooperation. His initiative is based upon this year’s Lent and Easter appeal of Robert Innes, bishop of the Anglican Diocese in Europe, to assist people in need. “My annual Lent appeal normally goes just to members of our Diocese and it usually raises about 15,000 euros. This year’s appeal was extended to include Easter. We teamed up with an Anglican mission agency, advertised it around the Anglican world, and as a result we raised more than 300,000 euros. People responded with great generosity”, says the bishop.

The key factor of the success was the fact that this year’s collection focused on the needs of Ukrainians affected by the war. Since the work of the diocese in Ukraine is limited, the best way to help was via other ecumenical partners with humanitarian operations in Ukraine. The diocese made donations to Caritas, and then came father Frank Hegedűs’s initiative to collaborate with the Jesuits. “They have a fine reputation for evangelism and education and a commitment to social justice. I have particularly appreciated working with Jesuit colleagues in Brussels in the ecumenical ‘Chapel for Europe’, which serves EU officials”, explains bishop Robert why he resonated to the cooperation at once.

As far as the project itself is concerned, it aims to build a garden pavilion for refugees in Uzhhorod at the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine. One of the partner organisations of the Hungarian Jesuit Refugee Service is the local Catholic College, which, since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, has been inhabited by more than sixty refugees. Since its garden is quite unusable for refugees, the locals started to build a bigger garden pavilion – with a heating-cooling system, independent of gas –, where community life can take place. Besides, the chapel of the college, which is a place for prayer for refugees as well, needs refurbishment and furniture, thus the whole project costs 6300 euros, of which USPG covers 5000 euros. “The project should help Ukrainians not to leave the country if it is not absolutely needed. And as we know, it is much better to stay in the homeland than to become a refugee out of the country”, summarizes father Szabolcs Sajgó.