Laszlo Orosz

* Csicser, December 18, 1697 – † Nagyszombat, July 11, 1773 / Jesuit missionary, university professor ; ; His father, Miklós Bercsényi, participated in the Rákóczi-style war of independence. László Orosz completed his secondary school studies in Kassa, entered the Jesuit order in 1716 and first studied at the novitiate in Trenčín, then at the university in Nagyszombat, and finally completed his studies in Graz. He applied several times for missionary service in South America, finally receiving permission from his superiors in 1726. After completing missionary training in Seville with his brother in faith, Ferenc Limp (1695–1768) and others, he boarded a ship in December 1728 and arrived in present-day Argentina in April 1729. His superiors decided that László Orosz would be appointed as a professor at the Jesuit University of Córdoba instead of proselytizing. Here he taught philosophy and theology, and although he applied several times to do missionary work, he only received permission to make a major inspection tour of the Indian missions in Paraguay in 1740. At that time, he visited about 30 reductions24. In the first half of the 1740s, he founded another Jesuit college in Buenos Aires. In 1746, he was appointed procurator (agent) of the order's province in Madrid. In 1749, he returned from Spain to Argentina in the company of several Jesuit scholars. In 1764, he founded Argentina's first printing press in Córdoba. As a result of the efforts to ban the Jesuit order, the Jesuit missions and provinces in Latin America were liquidated in 1767, and the Jesuit missionaries were expelled from America. László Orosz also arrived in the Spanish port of Cádiz on a crowded sailing ship, where he was arrested and imprisoned. Fortunately, two months later, thanks to the intercession of his patrons, he was released and settled in Nagyszombat, where he is also buried. ; On the way, he stopped in Vienna, where he appeared for questioning with Maria Theresa and asked for her intercession in order to free the Jesuit missionaries imprisoned in Spain - successfully. In addition to his teaching work, he worked hard to promote Argentine culture, and completed the great work that he had begun in the 17th century. In the second half of the 19th century, one of his fellow friars, Nicolás del Techo, began his work, which he titled Decades, and which dealt with the history of the Jesuit province of Paraguay up to 1685. Orosz wrote the history of the period between 1685 and 1750 and also included biographies of 39 Jesuit missionaries. He took the manuscript with him to Europe in 1746 and sent a copy to Nagyszombat, where it was published in two volumes in 1759. When László Orosz returned to Hungary, he primarily tried to help his fellow missionaries. He edited and prepared for printing the voluminous manuscript of Ferenc Xavér Éder (1727–1772), born in Selmecbánya, which contained the notes he had made during his missionary work in the Peruvian province of Moxito. Unfortunately, the book was not published, and a selection from it was published only long after his death.