Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:05:08family, their
00:06:25Every year on August 20th, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians
00:06:28pilgrimage to Budapest to see a hand that has remained in astonishing
00:06:32integrity for a thousand years. They arrive
00:06:35from within our borders, from the parts torn away in Trianon,
00:06:38from Western Europe, and even from overseas, to draw strength
00:06:42and hope from its holy relic.
00:06:45What is this force that gathers the nation around the
00:06:49Holy Right Hand year after year, where does that special, moving
00:06:53aura come from that touches everyone in its vicinity?
00:07:30A man's hand, a
00:07:34very delicate man's hand,
00:07:37for over a millennium, the Holy Right Hand has shrunk
00:07:41somewhat, but our king was not
00:07:45originally a big-handed person.
00:07:47He must have been a very beautiful sight.
00:07:51I experience this very deeply, and indeed, when I first took it out of the
00:07:54reliquary, tears welled up in my eyes, and I touched it so
00:07:58timidly, my God, what am I holding
00:08:01in my hand, and I realized that even people who are not
00:08:04necessarily close to faith,
00:08:08when they come near it,
00:08:12stand there in awe and look at it.
00:08:15Around the right hand of our holy king,
00:08:17the history of our
00:08:21people almost tangibly condenses. It not only accompanied us throughout
00:08:25the past thousand years, but experienced
00:08:28it with us, surrounded by adoration and
00:08:31respect when the nation was successful and
00:08:35strong, and suffered with the Hungarians during times of
00:08:38hardship, from the trials that awaited it, directly. In its fate,
00:08:42the first great
00:08:43miracle
00:08:47was that it was found at all, and could become
00:08:50our national relic. Our holy king Stephen, when
00:08:53he died in 1038,
00:08:55was buried in Székesfehérvár, and when
00:08:59he was exhumed for his canonization, which is what they always
00:09:02do, in modern terms, when they exhumed
00:09:05him, they couldn't find his right hand.
00:09:08They were astonished, and later it turned out that a monk
00:09:12named Mercurius was there at the time and
00:09:16took this right hand and carried it to his own territory,
00:09:19to what is now Biharvár county, and hid it in the
00:09:23monastery there for a whole year, when King
00:09:26Ladislaus passed by, and then he confessed this great
00:09:30secret to him, that he had indeed stolen King Stephen's
00:09:33right hand, because only the bones of the holy king
00:09:37remained, and he was very fired up by the fact that the right hand
00:09:40remained perfectly intact, and he thought
00:09:44that this must have some significance,
00:09:48why exactly this right hand, the hand with which he did so much good,
00:09:51with which he tried to realize God's love in his
00:09:55governance, as our nation's founding king,
00:09:59and this hand will undoubtedly
00:10:02be a guide for the future as well, so King
00:10:06Ladislaus did not punish him, but said, all right, then let it stay there for now,
00:10:10and Stephen's right hand remained there.
00:10:14"Where are you, King
00:10:16Stephen,
00:10:18you,
00:10:20the Hungarian nation,
00:10:23in mournful
00:10:25attire,
00:10:28before you is
00:10:31peace. The disaster of Mohács and the Turkish
00:10:34conquest brought not only the nation but also the Holy Right Hand through times of
00:10:38Calvary. The wars that flared up again and again, the
00:10:41Turkish, Tatar, and Western mercenary robber gangs, forced
00:10:45thousands of Hungarian families to flee. The right hand of the Holy King
00:10:48shared their fate. It also wandered for a long time. The
00:10:52Hungarians didn't even know for two long centuries.
00:11:03It ended up in Bosnia. There, nearly half a century later, Christian
00:11:07merchants found it, who bought it and took it to
00:11:10Ragusa. No one knew anything about it back home.
00:11:14It was only a good century and a half later that some Hungarian
00:11:17gentlemen visiting the city noticed with astonishment that the
00:11:20monastery's relic was none other than Saint Stephen's finally lost
00:11:23right hand. The Dalmatian monks, of course, clung to
00:11:27their cherished treasure, and thus the Holy Right Hand could only return
00:11:31from its exile after long diplomatic maneuvers
00:11:34in 1771.
00:11:41After nearly two peaceful centuries, the entire thousand-year-old Hungarian
00:11:45statehood was swept away by the Soviet conquest, the red flood
00:11:48did not spare our national relics either. Hundreds of thousands of Hungarian
00:11:52refugees were again followed by the Holy Right Hand. towards the West.
00:11:56They tried to smuggle it abroad along with the
00:11:59coronation regalia, so it was sent back
00:12:03from Switzerland, almost at the Pope's command, saying that the Holy
00:12:06Right Hand belongs in Hungary.
00:12:09When it returned, it was guarded in several places,
00:12:12but by the end of the war, Budapest became the final
00:12:16destination. Huge processions were held
00:12:19with it, and then finally in 1950 it was placed in the...
00:12:23St. Stephen's Basilica, since then, well, I think it has
00:12:26become a bit of our national shrine because of this, St. Stephen's
00:12:30Basilica, it was intended to be the representative
00:12:33church of the country's capital, and since it was built
00:12:36in honor of the Holy King, then the most worthy
00:12:40place for the Holy Right Hand is precisely St. Stephen's
00:12:43Basilica. From 1950
00:12:47onwards, practically, the Holy Right Hand was kept
00:12:50in a tabernacle, but... there were
00:12:53times when the parish priest kept it in his own apartment, because he was also afraid
00:12:57that unauthorized persons would take it from the
00:13:00church, and he was truly the guardian of the Holy
00:13:03Right Hand.
00:13:16Oh, Saint Stephen,
00:13:19praised be,
00:13:23go and rise.
00:13:42St. Stephen's country could disappear from the map for a time,
00:13:45conquering hands could mutilate it, but in the hearts of Hungarians,
00:13:48preserved in prayers and supplications,
00:13:51the homeland he bequeathed to us existed intact.
00:13:55"When our ancestors feared for the Holy Right Hand, rescued it,
00:13:58hid it, they also clung to the king's arm,
00:14:01which gave strength through the centuries. The veneration of
00:14:05relics is a very, very old thing, it almost dates back to the
00:14:08beginnings of the Church, when
00:14:11the first witnesses, who lived for Christ,
00:14:15also died for Christ, the martyrs, the martyrs,
00:14:19were immensely revered in the early Church, and it very
00:14:22often happened indeed, that we... "even
00:14:25a piece of their clothing, or anything they acquired,
00:14:29special signs and miracles also occurred around it, and
00:14:32a veneration of things related to saints, which
00:14:36we call relics, began to grow,
00:14:40which still exists in the Catholic Church today, well,
00:14:43of course, here we are primarily talking about the bones of saints
00:14:47and other things, those are primarily what we usually treat
00:14:51with special reverence, well, so King Stephen's... "the mummified, preserved
00:14:55right hand, we must say
00:14:58that it is truly a relic that has transcended
00:15:02being merely the preserved hand of a holy king, it goes beyond
00:15:05that, and it has become a symbol for the entire country
00:15:09as a relic that should be followed. The owner of the Holy
00:15:13Right Hand, King Stephen,
00:15:16is not only
00:15:18a saint of the Church, a saint of the Eastern and
00:15:22Western Churches alike today.
00:15:25"but the king who founded
00:15:29the Christian state of the Hungarian nation, so
00:15:33that's why we call him the founding king, there was a Hungarian
00:15:37state here before him. "so we mustn't
00:15:39imagine that some wild, running
00:15:43people were just haphazardly splashing around in the Carpathian Basin, and
00:15:46then they had to be brought to order, here it was a high
00:15:49culture that owned
00:15:52and still owns the
00:15:55Carpathian Basin, and the complete introduction
00:15:59into the Christian faith, and the
00:16:02organization of a state according to the pure principles
00:16:06of Christianity. "This is what King Stephen
00:16:09did. Hail Géza's son,
00:16:13Stephen, our
00:16:14hope.
00:16:18Blessings upon him,
00:16:21may he be our good
00:16:24leader.
00:16:27The holy king not only left his country to his people, but also
00:16:31his uniquely rich spiritual and intellectual heritage. His admonitions
00:16:34were originally intended for his tragically young, deceased son. "But his
00:16:38thoughts over the centuries became the cornerstone of the nation's
00:16:41shared wisdom. He wrote his admonitions
00:16:44to his son, I am always amazed at how wise
00:16:48and beautiful guidance he gives him about the
00:16:51one-language nation, how terribly
00:16:54poor, simple, it is astonishing how
00:16:57much from faith it stems, but at the same time with great
00:17:01political sense, he shaped it for a millennium,
00:17:04for millennia, I hope, he shaped its
00:17:07future. He wrote it in 1015
00:17:11for his successor, Prince Imre,
00:17:15but in the end it was meant for all his successors, and the
00:17:19admonitions were treated as such. Now,
00:17:22in this, the King writes a thousand
00:17:25years ago, that you should engrave it in your mind,
00:17:28every person is born in the same state.
00:17:30You know, today's
00:17:32world says that modern times
00:17:36are the product of human rights, and the basis of that is what
00:17:40I just quoted, because it's a bit
00:17:44clumsily phrased as everyone is born equal,
00:17:48but actually our aptitudes, our abilities, our
00:17:51circumstances, those are different, the King is
00:17:54very precise, looking at the 1001 law code, that is,
00:17:58the law code issued after his coronation, for example, there is
00:18:01a provision that if a person of servile
00:18:04status is at the head of a county, or at the head of a royal estate,
00:18:08then his word before the judge is equal to that of the
00:18:11Istvánoks. This is astonishing, so
00:18:14yes, every person is born in the same state, and the law code
00:18:18is consistent with this. This was the practice. The
00:18:21Árpáds followed this throughout, so King Stephen's
00:18:25successors followed
00:18:27it. And even later, under the
00:18:31elected kings, when King Stephen's
00:18:35legacy and ideology
00:18:37and provisions were no longer so vividly alive,
00:18:41a ruler whom we still look up to today, King
00:18:44Matthias, who elevates Pál Kinizsi, because he is the
00:18:47capable one. This is not Matthias's
00:18:51extraordinary peculiarity, but simply
00:18:53that as an honest Hungarian
00:18:57the provisions of the
00:19:00ancients, he follows King Stephen's
00:19:03laws and practices.
00:19:39It also states that tyrants must be swept away,
00:19:42and it even tells us, which
00:19:45I can kindly recommend to today's parliament and the
00:19:48voters, that a royal
00:19:51council, back then this was the
00:19:55group that determined governance
00:19:58in the country,
00:20:00to put it together from stupid, pompous and mediocre
00:20:04people, I think, is worthless. "I quoted
00:20:07this translation quite accurately just now, the original is in Latin,
00:20:11one can even feel the king's smile behind it,
00:20:14the experience and his smile, that
00:20:18nothing can be done with mediocre people, and then he adds,
00:20:22because nothing elevates but
00:20:25humility, and nothing casts down but arrogance and
00:20:29hatred. Please, for the 20th and 21st
00:20:32centuries, this is an especially important instruction, the king formulates
00:20:36very precisely. Everyone should look at their own life
00:20:39as well, if they approach their
00:20:43spouse, their
00:20:46environment with humble love, not to...
00:20:52the humility that the king speaks of is not a
00:20:55submission, not sneakiness,
00:20:58but the appreciation of the other.
00:21:16Posterity looks back on St. Stephen's life's work as something that
00:21:20began, and many feel that with his ascension to the throne,
00:21:24something definitively ended. The king undoubtedly
00:21:27knew that with his reign he was laying the foundations of a new
00:21:31era, but also that this could not be built on the denial of ancestors. He was a
00:21:35Christian ruler who lived his faith deeply, but also a descendant
00:21:38of the Turul clan, who never forgot, and certainly never persecuted
00:21:42the heritage
00:21:43of his predecessors.
00:21:50"Following our ancestors occupies the eighth place in royal
00:21:54dignity. The greatest royal embellishment, in my
00:21:57opinion, is to follow royal predecessors, to
00:22:00imitate parents. For he who despises what his paternal
00:22:03ancestors prescribed, also disregards divine laws. For
00:22:07fathers are fathers so that they may guide their sons, and sons are
00:22:11sons so that they may obey their parents. He who opposes
00:22:14his father, opposes God's
00:22:17enemy.
00:22:21"He himself dictates in his
00:22:23admonitions that ancestors must be respected,
00:22:27he did not break anything, for example, the
00:22:30Hungarian script, which has recently emerged,
00:22:34you know, because it was plastered over in many
00:22:37places later,
00:22:40for example, because it did not conform to the
00:22:44ruling thought from the 16th century
00:22:47to the 20th century,
00:22:50from this we single out the blessed King Charles
00:22:53IV, because if one looks into it, they know that
00:22:57it would be wrong to include him there,
00:23:00but overall, it must be said that yes, in
00:23:03Upper Hungary, they plastered over
00:23:06carved Hungarian script texts, short
00:23:10texts, or but among the Szeklers,
00:23:13where I am from, I am Szekler, I was born in Csíksomlyó,
00:23:16among the Szeklers, this script remained, which is why it is called Szekler
00:23:20runic script today, and you know,
00:23:23they dug up a document, on which it is claimed
00:23:26that King Stephen ordered that
00:23:29it is forbidden to write with this script, and anything that emerges
00:23:32must be destroyed, this is simply not true, it is a forgery,
00:23:36we would not know the Szekler runic script, we would not
00:23:39know it if the king had wanted to destroy
00:23:42it. In 1972, in the yearbook
00:23:46of the Jósa András Museum in Nyíregyháza,
00:23:49a volume
00:23:50was published
00:23:53that contained the text of a decree attributed to St. Stephen.
00:23:56The decree stated that
00:23:59runic script should not be used, it should be
00:24:03burned, and those who use it were to be severely punished.
00:24:08decree. We have 10 St. Stephen's
00:24:12laws, obviously, two of them
00:24:15are certainly forgeries, late
00:24:18forgeries. And as for the others, there is a debate as to whether
00:24:225% is a forgery, or 90%. Now,
00:24:26this one that has just appeared, this is the
00:24:29worst, whoever forged it, has never in their life
00:24:32seen a St. Stephen-era decree. For example, it contains the
00:24:35following errors: the dating reads
00:24:39"dated in the Vatican in a thousand," now
00:24:42in a thousand, there was no Vatican yet, only
00:24:44around 1200, so there's already an error
00:24:48here, and then the text begins with "Stephen the First and the members
00:24:51of the council." Now, in a thousand, at the time of St. Stephen's
00:24:54coronation, they did not yet speak of Stephen the First. For that,
00:24:58they had to wait for the second one. Even if they suspected that
00:25:02Stephen would be the first anyway, they still didn't use it, because there was
00:25:06no more. So these are just the first few words, and it's already full
00:25:10of such serious errors, the whole country took it seriously.
00:25:13They thought that if something appeared in a museum yearbook, then
00:25:17it could be taken as gospel, and... "in addition,
00:25:20the public mood was inclined to criticize St. Stephen,
00:25:24St. Stephen did not order the
00:25:28persecution of
00:25:29runic script.
00:25:36Lord Jesus said,
00:25:39those who live by the sword will perish by the sword, but between two fires,
00:25:42in a chosen path, only a fool
00:25:46hopes for peace. A commanding
00:25:50and strong person can create a great, firm empire,
00:25:54his own era may bow before him, but it is not certain that
00:25:57his nation will pray for him after his death.