HUNGARY: The Zeal of Zita

A clerk and a mendicant monk were taken from a train at Prague last week, charged with high treason against the Republic of Czechoslovakia. Old world diplomats studying the case grinned in their beards, figuratively doffed their cocked hats to dowdy, indomitable Zita of Bourbon-Parme, ex-Empress of Austria-Hungary. In the baggage of the clerk and the mendicant monk (Felix Christian and Father Charles Otto by name) were some typical royalist pamphlets. More interesting were bundles and bundles of membership blanks for a League of Prayer the object of which is the formal beatification of the ex-Habsburg Emperor Karl I, indomitable Zita’s late husband.

Ever since 1922 when Kaiser Karl died of pneumonia on the island of Madeira, indomitable Zita has worked, slaved, plotted to put her eldest, Otto, on the throne of Hungary. Everyone at all favorable to the Habsburg cause—from able, eagle-beaked Ignaz Seipel, twotime Chancellor of Austria, to the last lackadaisical Archduke—she has put to work. When Archduke Albrecht of Hungary formally renounced his aspirations to the throne two months ago (TIME, June 9), when Zita’s brother, Prince Sixtus de Bourbon-Parme was given a secret and important interview with one of the most important opponents of Habsburg restoration, Dictator-King Alexander of Jugoslavia, foreign correspondents felt that the November restoration of “Little Otto” was almost certain.

Firmly set against any Habsburg restoration in Hungary or elsewhere is Czechoslovakia. Not only is Czechoslovakia a bounden ally of the French, and thereby committed against the Habsburgs, but before the War a big slice of Czechoslovakia was Bohemia, one of the most obstreperous and least loyal sections of the loose-jointed; Austro-Hungarian Empire. Indomitable Zita has not given up all hope of winning back Austria. The best she can expect from Czechoslovakia is a sort of benevolent neutrality. Hence her League of Prayer and the proposed beatification of her husband.* For months Royalist agents and pro-Habsburg priests have been circulating petitions to the Vatican, among the devout, recounting stories of miracles occurring near Karl’s tomb in the Church of the Madonna del Monte at Funchal, Madeira. Czechoslovakian Catholics, such is the royalist reasoning, may not want to rejoin Hungary, but they are bound to think well of a Hungarian King whose father was the Blessed Karl.

Actually there is little likelihood that the Vatican will ever beatify indomitable Zita’s husband. Kaiser Karl was a devout Catholic, led a respectable life, was conscientious as an army officer. His fault was that, flaccid and morally spineless to a degree, he was trusted from one moment to the next by no one, from his great-uncle Franz Josef I to his royal “cousin” Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. The two years (1916-18) in which he wore the slightly age-battered crown of St. Stephen were a succession of backings and fillings and unfulfilled political pledges.

*Empress Zita and her followers are not attempting to make Kaiser Karl a Saint. Catholicism recognizes three degrees of sanctity: Venerable X, Blessed Y, Saint Z. Both the last two degrees require proof of at least two miracles. Blessed Y may be venerated in certain designated churches, Saint Z must be venerated in all churches.