Pope Francis appointed Mgr Dr Tamás Tóth, General Secretary of the Hungarian Catholic Bishops’ Conference as consultor of the Pontifical Council for Culture on 11 November 2019. The duration of the assignment is five years.
Saint John Paul II founded the Pontifical Council for Culture in 1982 to facilitate dialogue between the Church and the cultures. The tasks of the Dicastery include cooperation with bishop conferences, international and national organizations, institutions to foster participation in cultural life, common good and evangelization. Consultors are advisors supporting the Council’s work in establishing a connection between cultures and faith.
Tamás Tóth studied theology in Veszprém and Szeged in Hungary, then later in Rome as a student of the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum. He was ordained at Kalocsa in 2002 as a priest of the Archdiocese of Kalocsa-Kecskemét, he was a chaplain between 2004 and 2007, then Secretary of the Apostolic Nuncio in Budapest between 2007 and 2011. He was the rector of the Hungarian Pontifical Ecclesiastical Institute in Rome between 2011 and 2018, he has been the General Secretary of the Hungarian Catholic Bishops’ Conference since 2018. In 2019, the Holy See appointed him pontifical assistant for the Congregation of the School Sisters of Our Lady of Kalocsa. Besides his existing tasks, he has been the consultor of the Pontifical Council for Culture since 11 November 2019.
In 2006, he acquired his doctorate at the Pontifical Gregorian University from church history with his dissertation “Rebirth of the Hungarian Church after Turkish rule based on the activity of Gábor Patachich and Ádám Patachich, Archbishops of Kalocsa-Bács (1733-1784)”, which was nostrificated by the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Szeged. Besides his central and pastoral tasks, he has been teaching since 2004, he has been a college professor since 2019. He is the author of several books and papers published in Hungarian, Italian, German, English and Croatian. His main areas of interest include church history of Central-Europe in modern and present times. He has conducted archival researches in Hungary, Austria, Croatia, Rome and Vatican City.
All new members and consultors of the Council were appointed today.
Cardinal Péter Erdő Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, Primate of Hungary was the ordinary member of the Dicastery since 2009.
Budapest, 11 November 2019.
General Secretariat of the HCBC
