ABSTRACT
The 1949 trial in Budapest of Cardinal József Mindszenty and his accomplices, the show trial on which the popular film ‘The Prisoner’ was loosely based, made Mindszenty a household name. Not only did the Pope excommunicate all those involved in staging the infamous show trial, but the cardinal’s cause was taken up with zeal in the West, where Mindszenty became one of the best-known victims of Communist oppression and was widely understood to embody ‘Christian values’ in direct opposition to ‘Communist’ ones. Mindszenty was sentenced to life imprisonment but again came to the world’s attention when he was released during the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. The Hungarian cardinal soon took refuge in the American Legation (later US Embassy) in Budapest. He was to remain in the US Embassy for fifteen years (from his entry on 4 November 1956 until his eventual departure on 28 September 1971), during which time he gradually became a diplomatic stumbling-block not only to Hungarian-US rapprochement but also to post-Vatican II attempts at Marxist-Christian dialogue and to the wider cause of East-West détente. This chapter seeks to reassess the significance of the Mindszenty affair in light of post-Cold War Hungarian, Vatican and US state and diplomatic sources.
