Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/223

Among the five newly created Cardinals, who have been raised to the ranks of the Pontifical College by Pope Pius XI. on Dec. 18th, we find Dr. Justin Serédy, a Benedictine of the Abbey of Pannolhalm, Hungary. Dr. Serédy is a Slovak, born in Deakovce, Orava County, Slovakia. After receiving his early classical education at the University of Pressburg, now Bratislava, he joined the Benedictine Abbey of Pannolhalm and was ordained to the holy priesthood in 1901. In Religion he took the name of Justin, and according to the government requirements changed his family name of Sapuček to that of Serédy.

On account of his promising abilities, his superiors sent him to the Benedictine College of San Anselmo at Rome, where he earned his Doctorate in Canon Law, and where he subsequently became professor of this subject. During the late war he served as chaplain in the Austro-Hungarian army. After the war Father Justin Serédy again returned to Rome.

The learned Dominican, Rev. Joseph Noval, O. P., professor of Church Law at the Angelico, International Dominican College, Rome, says that in 1904 Pope Pius X. by a Brief, “Arduum sane munus” dated Mar. 19th of that year, inaugurated the greatest ecelesiastical event of the twentieth century. This was the Codification of the New Church Law. A Pontifical Commission was appointed by the Holy Father, and it was also on this Commission that Dr. Serédy served as consultor, which position he filled with marked ability. It was, therefore, as a mark of personal distinction in service to the Church that Dr. Serédy was elevated to the Pontifical College.

Cardinal Serédy is the youngest member of the Sacred College, being only forty-three years of age. He was consecrated Archbishop, Primate of Hungary, in the Sistine Chapel by Pope Pius XI, on Sunday, January 5, 1928. As his predecessor, the late Cardinal Černoch, so also Cardinal Serédy came from humble Slovak parents. Cardinal Serédy’s father is dead, but his mother still lives in the small town of Deakovce, Slovakia. Here Cardinal Serédy paid her a visit shortly before his elevation to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.