{"id":41118,"date":"2020-01-17T16:09:23","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T21:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/insidethevatican.com\/?p=41118"},"modified":"2020-08-06T17:04:13","modified_gmt":"2020-08-06T21:04:13","slug":"a-hungarian-franciscan-who-helps-abandoned-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/insidethevatican.com\/magazine\/people\/top-ten-people\/a-hungarian-franciscan-who-helps-abandoned-children\/","title":{"rendered":"A Hungarian Franciscan Who Helps Abandoned Children"},"content":{"rendered":"
A Hungarian Franciscan who helps abandoned children<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n “To free my fellows from the chains of fear and little faith…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cEvery child is a message for humanity: God loves us. Raising a child is an encounter with God. Jesus said: if someone adopts one of the smallest, receive myself,\u201d says Father Csaba B\u00f6jte<\/strong>, who, for more than 25 years, has been adopting and raising children off the streets of Hungary after the collapse of Communism. Born in 1959, in Southern Transylvania, Father Csaba grew up under the Communist regime in Hungary; his own father was imprisoned for seven years for political reasons. Reflecting back on the situation of his country, Father Csaba describes the needs of the people after the collapse of Communism:<\/p>\n \u201cIn Southern Transylvania, Communism built with great financial effort an industry that wasn\u2019t profitable from the beginning. They mined coal in the Jiu Valley, they mined metal ore in the Apuseni Mountains, and they separated out the valuable metals from the ore in Hunedoara and Calan. For these enterprises a cheap, unskilled, young labor force was brought from all over the country. Thousands of people were dislocated, receiving small, simple apartments, with most of them forming beautiful families with a lot of children.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The inevitable downfall of the dictator brought with it the downfall of these megalomaniac plans as well. Suddenly this mass of people without any roots found itself unemployed. Many families fell apart beneath these difficulties and problems. The saddest thing is that many children found themselves on the street. In the meantime the Franciscan community, after fifty years of forced silence, started to bloom again. We felt that it was the will of God to…take upon ourselves the problems and troubles of the people. In 1992 I was moved from Dej to Deva. In the spring of 1993 we established the Saint Francis Foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n For more than 25 years, Father Csaba\u2019s Francis Foundation has been looking after children; during this time over 6,000 children have passed through the Foundation. Today there are over 2,000 children in their care in over eighty-three locations. These children receive more than just food and shelter; they receive a community.<\/p>\n