On the occasion of the upcoming „Csángó” Ball in Budapest on 15 February, a press conference was held yesterday to publicise the event and highlight the importance of the Csángó minority living in Romania. MFA State Secretary Zsolt Németh said that the goal of the event was to draw attention to the Csángó people and „bring them into fashion”.
The Csángó people are a Hungarian minority group of Roman Catholic faith living in eastern Romania. The Csángó guests of the Ball will present their folk traditions related to the wedding ceremony. Parliamentary State Secretary Zsolt Németh of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that the goal of the Csángó Ball was to draw attention to the Csángó people and „bring them into fashion”. If they become fashionable in Hungary, they will be more inclined to be proud of their own culture, Mr Németh added.
The MFA State Secretary pointed out that the Csángó people are unique in that they represent the most archaic form of Hungarian language and culture in the world. The Csango people "have gone a long way” since the collapse of Communism in 1989. Their distinct community was not recognised at all, and their situation only improved gradually during the nineties; the first Csángó Ball in 1996 was a breakthrough at the time.
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Today, more than two thousand children receive education in Hungarian in the homeland of the Csángó people in Moldavia. There are 28 educational facilities, out of which 19 operate within the state-financed public education framework. Mr Németh underlined that the Catholic bishopric seated in Iași, Moldavia, was still unwilling to permit the Csángó people to have their mass liturgy in their native language, which posed a significant obstacle to Hungarian education. The Csángó people are the only minority in Europe who are not allowed to attend religious services in their mother tongue, he emphasised.
(Ministry of Human Resources)
