Statue of Sára Salkaházi in Košice
Statue, monument, memorial plaque
Sára Salkaházi was born in 1899 in Košice, where she became a teacher and later a journalist. Two years before the outbreak of World War II, she moved permanently to Budapest. After the Trianon decision, she was unable to continue teaching in her hometown due to her refusal to take the oath of allegiance demanded by the Czechs. She took her final vows in Budapest as a sister of the Society of Social Brothers. The order hid about a thousand persecuted people in its convents during World War II, and Sára Salkaházi was arrested in one of them. In 1944, she was shot dead by the Arrow Cross soldiers in front of the main customs house in Budapest, on the banks of the Danube. ; ; Ottó Szabó, a visual artist from Košice, worked for a year on the statue of Sára Salkaházi, who was originally from Košice, which was completed in 2012. The slightly larger-than-life bronze and limestone sculpture was placed in the southern nave of the Košice Cathedral in January 2013 due to renovation work, and its official consecration took place on May 12, 2013, during a festive mass in Slovak. The consecration ceremony was led by Bernard Bober, Archbishop of Košice. ; The upper part of the statue is made of bronze, and the lower part is made of stone. It is made of limestone, such as the one that can be seen under the Parliament, on the banks of the Danube, where Sára Salkaházi and her companions were executed. "This is a deliberate symbol, I designed the sculpture to show the sight as if the hot bronze were flowing into the cracks of the limestone," said Ottó Szabó about the work. ; On the statue, in addition to the name and the years, there is the Latin motto of Blessed Sára Salkaházi's perpetual vow: Here I am, send me! ; The Holy See authorized the initiation of the beatification process for Sára Salkaházi in January 1997, and the College of Cardinals closed the case on June 21, 2005 and authorized the beatification. The Holy Father subsequently signed and promulgated the decree on April 28, 2006. The solemn proclamation of the beatification (the beatification Mass) took place on September 17, 2006 in Budapest's Szent István Square (in front of the Basilica).