Bishop Zoltán Balog resigned from the pastoral presidency at the Synod meeting on 16 February, as reported on the website of the Hungarian Reformed Church.
Balog’s resignation was prompted by a recent scandal that caused public outrage where former President Katalin Novák granted clemency to an accomplice of a convicted paedophile. Novák resigned on 10 February after the events, closely followed by the resignation of former Minister of Justice Judit Varga.
Three days earlier, at a meeting of Reformed Church leaders on Tuesday, Balog admitted that he supported Endre K.’s clemency application, but ultimately did not resign after the sympathy vote he convened, where 86 per cent of those present supported him, while four bishops and four chief stewards asked him to reconsider his public role.
At that time, he stated that Novák made the decision regarding the clemency case as a sovereign actor, and took responsibility for it.
The bishop acknowledged that by arguing in favour of the clemency he made a mistake, for this, he asks for forgiveness. However, he stressed that he was not asking for forgiveness for standing by a person seeking clemency, in whose innocence he believes, but because he caused harm to the Reformed Church.
According to the laws of the Hungarian Reformed Church, the resignation will become effective with the decision of the next Synod; this time there was no voting on the matter. Until the next Synod session, Bishop Dániel Pásztor, the Bishop of the Tisza Region Reformed Diocese and the pastoral vice-president of the Synod, will serve as the executive in charge of the presidential duties.
Bishop Zoltán Balog delivered remarks at the Synod meeting on Friday, and after reading a passage from the Scripture, he offered a prayer. The video recording of the speech and the prayer was uploaded to the website of the Reformed Church.
In his prayer the bishop asked God for strength and wisdom for his gesture not to be ‘an act of escape,’ ‘not to be done for political orders, not for hypocritical, external pressure,’ ‘not to be done to force power-hungry people into our church,’ and ‘not to be done out of calculation’.
Then he added: ‘Thank you for experiencing and being able to experience the grace of forgiveness...Forgive me for not being vigilant and cautious enough, and for not seeing the dangers lurking in this grace matter for our country, our nation, our Church, our President. Forgive me if the victims of child abuse felt abandoned, not only now, but so many times in life. Protect them even when we fail to do so!’
‘I entrust the life of our Church to you. It has always been there, it is here now, for it is in the best place. I resign from the position given to me by the Synod. I do this for our Church,’ Balog concluded.
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