Hungarian Conservative

‘Father Thomas rises at six each morning and sounds the bronze bell of his church. He celebrates mass in the Bahasa Indonesia language in the Paroki Santa Perawan Maria Yang Diangkat Ke Surga, that is, the Parish Church of the Assumption of Virgin Mary. Beside the traditional psalms, the church resounds with a song lauding Saint Stephen, sung ardently by a choir of one hundred to one hundred and fifty children. In Flores, where 90 per cent of inhabitants profess the Catholic faith, the long-term viability of Christianity is signalled by the fact that more than two hundred Verbite novices studying at the Saint Paul Major Seminary at Ledalero have chosen to serve God as their lifelong calling.’

The Frankish–Moravian struggles that shattered the tranquillity of Pannonia, even before the arrival of the Hungarians, caused irreparable damage to the settlement structure and ecclesiastical institutions of the region, which were thus left in a state of collapse when the Hungarian conquest came. As a result, it took a good century for the new missions, with the birth of the Christian Kingdom of Hungary, to bring the region back into the Church once and for all.