History of the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service

In autumn 1987 two people met at the parish of the Holy Family at Zugligeti Street in Budapest, who independently from one another have for long been keen on searching for opportunities of helping the poor. Csilla von Boeselager from Germany knocked on the door of father Imre Kozma. They talked about loosely equipped hospitals, old people’s homes, the problematic living of the retired with small pensions, the families raising more than one child, the disturbances of moral values and spiritual life, and the ways of giving aid. Baroness Csilla found a priest, who not only held the community of the parish together through pastoral care, but in a wider sense also represented brotherly solidarity embodied in the Charity Service. It is due to this, that the donations sent to Hungary by baroness Csilla were taken on and delivered to hospitals, the homes of the elderly and children, or the needy families by the members of this parish community, while in the meantime they also mapped the needy in an ever widening circle.

The social and political circumstances favoured the organization of the Charity Service in a way, that after four decades, the founding of non-governmental organizations and associations became a civilian right in Hungary. Based upon this opportunity, the Charity Service could be established in the spirit of the 9 centuries old Sovereign Order of Malta: “Defence of the Faith and assistance to the poor”. Under the leadership of Csilla von Boeselager the Ungarischer Malteser Caritas-Dienst was founded in December 1988 in Germany, followed by the founding of the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service on the 10th of February in 1989 under the leadership of Father Imre Kozma.

Before Christmas 1989, armed battles have begun in Romania in an attempt to fail the political dictatorship. Just right before Europe could start awakening, young men with backpacks, and trucks loaded with aid went on to help the poorest of a society with medicaments, food, and clothing, who became impoverished during the previous decades. And they brought with them the hope of a more humane life, the belief, the message of the idea of Christian brotherhood. In 1991, in a Yugoslavia, artificially put together from small states, weapons began to grumble. As a result, nearly 60.000 people – Hungarians, Croatians, Bosnians, - have tried to rescue their very lives to Hungary. And those who couldn’t make it by their own efforts, were aided by the volunteers of the Charity Service with ambulance cars, traffic cars, and buses: old and infants, ill and the wounded, two and a half thousand helpless people found shelter under the eight-pointed Maltese cross representing the eight Beatitudes of the Gospel.

Over the course of this grandiose rescue action, the Charity Service became partners with government agencies as well as social organizations.

The public opinion sensing the concrete manifestation of social solidarity turned to the Maltese Charity Service with trust, and in Hungary – implicitly - it has entrusted the charity service with the management of and dealing with social and social-psychic tensions that the administrative, social and healthcare institutional network of society was unable to solve.

It thus paved the way to:

• The establishment of a homeless-care network,
• The establishment of institutions for the ill, and the tired, left-alone elderly
• The initiation of programs that help improve the living conditions of people living with physical and mental disabilities,
• The institutional care of families, family fragments living in constant, hopeless situations,
• The establishment of homes and services for the raising, care and education of the abandoned, orphan, and severly endangered children, and the youth.

The many-sided activities of the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service are most effectively symbolized by the expression of donation - that is a gift we receive to pass it on.