1. Martyrdom
In the middle of the 20th century, two young priests were murdered for their faith in the Slovenian-Hungarian border region. Danijel Halas, parish priest of Velika Polana, was shot into the Mura River near Hotiza on 16 March 1945, while János Brenner was killed between Rábakethely and Zsida on the night of 14-15 December 1957.
The perpetrators committed their crimes in the dark, working in groups, and did everything they could to ensure that their identities would never be revealed.
Brenner
In the autumn of 1957, an attempt was made to assassinate János Brenner in an attack disguised as a traffic accident. Wooden planks were scattered in front of his motorbike, but he managed to avoid them.
Shortly afterwards, another trap was set for him: on the night of 14-15 December 1957, he was called to attend a patient in neighbouring Zsida. Brenner took the Holy Sacrament from the church in Rábakethely and, with a torch in his hand, set off with the boy who had called him to visit the patient, through woods and fields.
He was attacked near the church. He managed to escape, but instead of turning back, he continued on to the supposed patient. A few hundred metres later, he was caught again, and this time he was unable to escape his pursuers.
They killed him with 32 knife wounds, stepping on his neck with brutal cruelty. His torch was found badly damaged at the scene of the crime the next morning. The Blessed Sacrament, which he had protected with his left arm, remained untouched.
After the first assassination attempt, János Brenner laughed as he recounted how cleverly he had outwitted his attackers. Because of the incident, his bishop offered to transfer him to another location where he would be safe. “I am not afraid. I am happy to stay,” replied Brenner, who, according to his spiritual diary, had already desired as a novice to earn his “heavenly crown” by passing through the “fiery furnace of suffering”.
Halas
Towards the end of the war, the bishop appointed Danijel Halas, the Slovenian parish priest of Velika Polana, as confessor to the nuns of Lendava. On the afternoon of 16 March 1945, Halas went to Lendava, from where he set off back in the evening, but he made slow progress because someone had punctured his bicycle tyre, so he had to keep stopping to pump it up. In Hotiza, he called on a family he knew, who tried to persuade him to stay the night. However, he set off into the darkness. At the end of the village, people dressed in Hungarian gendarme uniforms were waiting for him. They took Halas to the Mura River and shot him four times, killing him. His body was found three days later in Kot. Not far from Lendava, where he had served for many years.
In early 1945, at a meeting of local communists, it was decided that Halas and another parish priest from the Mura region, Ivan Jerič, should be eliminated. Jerič was warned and managed to escape. Although Halas was probably aware that they wanted to kill him, he did not flee. In February 1945, he wrote to his brother, who had invited him to Ljubljana: “No one is thinking of emigrating, but we are waiting here and standing by our nation. Whatever has to happen, let it happen! I have complete faith in God!”
2. Family
“Are there families where the father is the priest of the family?” (János Székely, Bishop of Szombathely)
Parents’ faith influences their children’s faith. The families in which János Brenner and Danijel Halas grew up played a major role in shaping their vocations. Their surviving sermons and notes reveal that the theme of family was particularly important to them . They believed this because they had experienced in their own lives that it is primarily the family that can convey values to the younger generations.
Brenner
János Brenner’s brother, Father József Brenner, also a priest, writes in his memoirs that their father attended Mass every day and prayed the rosary every day. Their father was intended to become a priest, and although he did not, all three of his children chose the priesthood. Their mother, Julianna Wranovich, shared their religious zeal, and her son remembers her as a kind soul who supported families in need, as described in his writings.
“The war ended in 1945. Money was worthless, practically non-existent. The money you received one day was worthless the next. It was the poorest Christmas of our lives, but it was not unhappy at all. The day before Christmas, János came home with a pine branch he had found on the street. He thought we could decorate it and use it as our Christmas tree. We cut sugar cubes into quarters and wrapped them in coloured tissue paper. They looked like real Christmas tree decorations. On this occasion, we really did receive our gifts from the Baby Jesus, as our family, who had survived the war unscathed, was able to be together.”(Message from Blessed János Brenner, martyr, p. 313 – Memoirs of József Brenner)
Halas
No memories of Halas’s family have survived. He was of Slovenian nationality and came from a peasant family. He had three siblings, two of whom, his two sisters, took care of him until their deaths, while his brother lived in Ljubljana. His mother died early.
The family was close friends with Jožef Klekl, a retired priest serving in Črenšovci, who was a defining figure in the spirituality and national consciousness of the Mura region for decades and who may have played a major role in Halas’s decision to become a priest.
Halas, in the religious newspapers Novine and Marijin list, edited first by Klekl and later by himself, and in his sermons, often referred to the family, whose functioning he considered extremely important for the development of the entire Mura region community.
“But parents have a task that is more important than any earthly inheritance: to ensure that they pass on to their children the faith they have received from God. […] No priest can plant the seeds of faith as deeply and fruitfully in a child’s tender heart as a mother can.” Halas’s article in the Novine newspaper (1933)
3. In the shadow of terror
The two martyrs sacrificed their lives during the darkest decades of 20th-century history. Halas was murdered in the turmoil at the end of the Second World War , while Brenner was killed during the years of repression following the 1956 revolution. Although not all of the perpetrators have been identified, in both cases the intention behind the murder of the young priests was to instil fear in the hearts of the people. As Jesus quotes from Scripture in the Garden of Gethsemane: “It is written. I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” (Mt 26:31).
Brenner
After World War II, the Hungarian Communist Party, which came to power, behaved hostile towards churches. It took particular courage for the young János Brenner to decide to join the Cistercian monastic order. Shortly after Brenner joined, the order was dissolved, so he was ordained not as a monk but as a diocesan priest in 1955. That same year, he began his ministry at the parish in Rábakethely, where the popular young priest, who was able to appeal to young people, quickly caught the attention of the state authorities. During the reprisals following the suppression of the 1956 revolution, the authorities decided that the time had come to deal with Brenner. They wanted to intimidate the people by murdering him.
Personal timeline with historical events
1931 Birth of János Brenner
1945 Following World War II, Hungary falls under Soviet occupation
1947 The Hungarian Communist Party comes to power
1948 Church schools are nationalised
1949 Construction of the first Iron Curtain between Hungary and the West
1950 János Brenner begins his novitiate in the Cistercian Order
1950 The communist regime dissolves the monastic orders
1955 János Brenner is ordained as a priest and begins his ministry in Rábakethely
23 October 1956 – The revolution breaks out, followed by reprisals
14–15 December 1957 – János Brenner is murdered
Halas
Shortly after Halas arrived in Velika Polana, when the Mura region became part of the Kingdom of Hungary during World War II, he was arrested by the Hungarian authorities at the end of October 1941 on charges of collaborating with Slovenian communists and spent several months in prisons in Budapest with two fellow priests from the Mura region. After nine months, his sentence was suspended and he returned to his parish. Due to his deep commitment to his priestly ministry, he stood in the way of not only the Hungarian authorities but also the growing communist movement, and, as he put it, he had to live “between two fires”.
At the beginning of 1945, it became clear that the Mura region would fall under the control of the Yugoslav communists after the war. The area was still under Hungarian administration led by the Arrow Cross Party, but this collapsed in the spring amid the chaos caused by the approaching Red Army. From the end of 1944, Yugoslav communist resistance intensified in the region, leading to several bloody clashes with the Hungarian authorities, who responded to the attacks with executions.
During the Second World War, the Yugoslav communists not only fought against the German, Italian and Hungarian armies occupying the country , but also actively opposed the Catholic Church on ideological grounds. The communists in the Mura region had a particular aversion to Danijel Halas because the parish priest discouraged young people from joining the youth organisations led by the communists. At the beginning of 1945, they therefore proposed Halas’s execution.
Personal timeline with historical events
1908 Halas is born
1920 The Mura region becomes part of the Kingdom of SHS.
1933 Halas is ordained as a priest
1934-1939 Chaplain in Lendava
1939 Moves to Velika Polana as parish priest
1941 The Mura region becomes part of the Kingdom of Hungary
October 1944 The Arrow Cross Party takes power in Hungary.
16 March 1945 – Danijel Halas is murdered
4. Young People
The education of young people is an important issue, as the values conveyed through education shape society. For oppressive regimes, taking control of the education of young people is particularly important, as it allows them to convey the ideology that supports their rule to society. While in free countries, multiple worldviews can coexist, in dictatorships, only one opinion is allowed.
Communist dictatorships were therefore typically hostile to the Catholic Church’s youth spiritual movements, which aimed to provide young people with a sense of community. Among these, the Marian Society was particularly important to Halas, of which Brenner was also a member in his childhood, and he also participated in scouting. Although church associations were dissolved in Hungary in 1946, Brenner always paid close attention to younger people, for whom he became a true role model.
Brenner
In his spiritual diary, which he kept as a Cistercian novice, Brenner writes enthusiastically about his vocation. He writes about the role of a priest: “He is like a roadside sign that, giving up itself, only shows the way and awakens hope in weary travellers. He is like a roadside fruit tree, giving freely and abundantly of what he himself has received. […] This is the work of a priest, constant devotion and sacrifice, as our Lord, the eternal High Priest, did.”
Brenner gave much of this fruit to many people.
The entries in his spiritual diary, his sermons spiced with humour and love, and the stories that have survived about him all testify to the fact that he drew inexhaustible strength for his priestly vocation from an extremely deep well. It was noted that he spoke kindly to everyone, from the school principal to the cleaning lady. In photos, he usually smiles broadly at the camera, and he often played football with the children before religious education classes. No wonder he was popular with young people.
An interesting case. Headmaster Boros’s two daughters and son were not allowed to attend religious education classes. Therefore, the Reverend solved the problem of their religious education by having the three children stand outside the window while he taught religious education classes at school. He always walked in front of the window and taught in such a way that they could hear him outside.
Memories of János Brenner by Erzsébet Vincenza Kurucz, a nun of the Salvatorian Order
Halas
Halas played an active role in organising the Marian Society in Lendava. It was important to Halas that young people spend their time in a religious community, so he discouraged them from joining the liberal Sokol organisation, which was active between the two world wars, and the atheist Association of Peasant Boys and Girls, which was founded by the communists. He also warned parents from the pulpit not to let their children get close to the unbelieving communists.
“The question is who will win over the people. It is not difficult to keep the vast majority of our people in the Catholic camp, because we do not yet have any religious haters. It depends mostly on us, the priests, how we can grasp and resolve the issue. This is not a trivial matter. Especially since the apostles of the opposing, non-believing camp are young, educated people, the sons of our mothers from the Mura region. They know our people well, they know their needs, their wounds, their desires. And in these difficult times, which are characteristic of the whole world, our people are also looking for a saviour. And it is precisely some of our sons who are offering themselves as saviours. (Novine, October 1940)
5. Memory
Although the two martyrs could not be mentioned in the period following their deaths, local communities preserved their memory for decades, which the authorities, who regarded religion as an enemy, tried to erase from people’s memories with lies and silence. The memory was kept alive by the hope that the truth would one day come out.
Pilgrimage
In memory of the two martyrs, the Light at the Border pilgrimage route, created as part of the Slovenia-Hungary Cooperation Programme, connects places of remembrance related to their lives between Szentgotthárd and Lendava.
Brenner
Although the truth could not be revealed in the decades following the murder, people kept Brenner’s memory alive in their own way.
In memory of his chaplain, Dr. Ferenc Kozma, parish priest, had a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows carved, which he had erected as a tomb in the cemetery in Rábakethely – this did not require permission from the authorities. For many years, a candle burned in front of the statue. On the anniversary of the night of János Brenner’s murder, people always placed a candle in Zsida, near the place where the murdered priest was found. It has also become customary in the local community to replace the third pink candle on the Advent wreath, which symbolises the holiday, with a red candle in memory of the martyr.
Beatification
Timeline:
1990 – first article about the martyr’s murder
1996 Consecration of the Good Shepherd Chapel
1999 Start of the beatification process
2018 János Brenner is beatified
Halas
Contradictory information about the murder of Danijel Halas appeared immediately after his death, but for decades no one dared to question the truth. It was in the interest of the communist regime, which dealt ruthlessly with its ideological opponents, to blame the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, who were persecuting the partisans in the Mura region, for Halas’s murder. Towards the end of the war, the Arrow Cross Party executed several members of the resistance. Halas’s name still appears on the Velika Polana memorial erected in 1948 to commemorate the victims of the Hungarian occupation. However, there is much circumstantial evidence to suggest that Halas was a victim of the ideological purge led by the communists, but this could not be discussed during the decades of dictatorship that followed the war.
In 1961, a memorial was erected on his grave, and in 1972, a memorial chapel was built at the former home of Danijel Halas in Črenšovci.
In 2013, a church nursing home was built in Velika Polana, named after Danijel Halas, and in 2001, the Halas pilgrimage route was completed, connecting the places between Ljutomer and Lendava where Halas served. In 2011, the Way of Life crossroads was consecrated, which was created along Halas’s last journey – the road between the place of his capture and the scene of his murder.
Since 2010, a bicycle tour has been held at the end of June on the anniversary of Halas’s baptism, which has been combined with a bicycle blessing since 2021.
In 2002, the diocesan process for the beatification of Danijel Halas began, which was completed in 2015. The process is currently underway in Rome.
After his death
Timeline:
1961 – A tomb is erected for Halas
1972 – Halas memorial chapel
2001 – Halas pilgrimage
2002 – Start of the beatification process
2011 – Way of Life Crossroads