(20 Aug 2000) English/Nat

Hungarians were marking a millennium of statehood and Christianity on Sunday with fireworks, parades and the canonization of their beloved King Stephen, whose rule began 1,000 years ago.

For the first time ever, the Eastern Orthodox Church was canonizing a saint of the Roman Catholic Church.

Each year Hungarians mark St. Stephen's Day, to honor King Stephen, who ruled Hungary from 1000 to 1038.

The king is credited with bringing Christianity to the country's tribes and was elevated to sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church in 1686.

But the Eastern Orthodox Church, which split from Rome in 1054, did not recognize King Stephen as a saint, as it did not recognize anyone canonized by Rome.

At an evening Mass celebrated in Budapest's Basilica by a special emissary of Pope John Paul II, Bishop Angelo Sodano, Patriarch Bartholomeos I of Constantinople, head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, announced the recognition of St. Stephen by the Eastern Orthodox Church as one of its own saints.

High clergy from both east and west attended.

In a statement to the state Hungarian news agency, Sodano welcomed the canonization of St. Stephen by the Eastern Orthodox Church, saying the move may mean a return to unity of the two churches, despite the painful differences of the past centuries.

Roughly 60 percent of Hungary's 10 (m) million people are Catholic, while fewer than 1 percent are Eastern Orthodox.

After the Mass, the festivities were to continue with a religious procession in which relics were to be taken to the House of Parliament, where St. Stephen's crown is on permanent display.

The relics include a part of St. Stephen's skull, on loan from a Dominican monastery in Dubrovnik, Croatia, where it has been since 1590, when it was hidden for safekeeping from Tartars who invaded the region; and the king's right hand, called the Holy Right, usually on display in the Basilica.

Church officials expected 100-thousand people to participate.

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