‘We cannot effectively support women until we take into account that most of them are or will become mothers,’ President Novák said, emphasising that she herself is a mother of three. She added: ‘We can command armies, govern states, but we are truly indispensable only to our own families. There, and only there, are we irreplaceable.’

According to Hungarian folk belief, those who receive the ashes on Ash Wednesday will be free from headaches for quite a while. In the olden days, there was even a Hungarian folk tradition according to which people returning home from church rubbed their foreheads with those who stayed at home, to help them avoid headaches.

Despite the ambivalent fate of the Jewry of Europe—to put it mildly—from pogroms and blood libels to cooperation and integration from moral and cultural aspects Judaism cannot be separated from Christianity in shaping Europe’s identity.