Debrecen - Nyíregyházi Egyházmegye

The time of the Holy Masses: 3.30PM every Sunday

Place: St László Dominican Parish, Debrecen, Füredi út 6.

Everyone is welcome!

This service is most unique in the Catholic church in Hungary, as in the academic terms (ten months in each year) it offers continuous English pastoral service for foreign students. Other similar services existing in Hungary are seasonal and limited to a few locations frequented by tourists in the summer. 

The English Chaplaincy in Debrecen, however, is a much more different service alive for almost two decades now.

The total number  of foreign students who study in Debrecen varied between 3.000 and nearly 6.000 in the last ten academic years (almost 3 per cent of the city's population). It has been continuously growing by approximately 300 to 600 every year. There are around 80 to 130 young people among them who regularly come to English masses,

Our English speaking student group already has two stable communities for several years. One of those is the choir, with ten-twelve core members, who not only provide liturgical service (music and singing) but also exist as a prayer group. The younger one is the Bible Fellowship, with eight to ten core members, who come together twice in a month, they discuss a selected passage of the Holy Scripture in prayer, and provide intercessory prayer services. They also act as Lectors in our masses.

Traditionally, in the last five or six years before the Covid-19 pandemic, we had regular retreats in every Lent and some in Advent, too. In the Lenten season we also have English Stations of the Cross every Lenten Fridays. The last of these Stations, on the Friday before the week of Easter, is usually bilingual when the foriegn students and the local parishioners pray together.

There are other more casual group activities that also bound these youth to our parish, such as agapes usually a 'Get together of Nations' - sort of a welcome party in mid-Autumn, a Christmas Party, and and Easter / end-of-academic year meet-up, as well as movie screenings. 

As a truly international community, the majority of us is from Africa (Nigeria, Camerun and a few from other African countries). They are followed closely by Asians: mostl from Korea, India, the Philippines and Viet Nam. The rest are representatives of Middle East (Syrian, Iranian and Lebanese Chrisitans, some of them of the Eastern Rites) and South America (Brazil). Students from Europe are more like the exception. We have only seen a handful of them in our history, but we also have a few Hungarians coming to the English Masses.

Öröm-hír Press Office, Diocese of Debrecen-Nyíregyháza