Hungary's oldest working solicitor won an appeal on Monday against a verdict handed down in 1949 at a showcase Communist trial when his client, a Catholic priest, was jailed over his handling of church funds.
"I'm happy - it was worth it, after all," 95-year-old Gyorgy Schirilla told Reuters after the Supreme Court upheld his appeal and acquitted his client, Miklos Nagy, 31 years after his death.
Nagy was jailed for three years for failing to place $24,000 and 20,000 Swiss francs of church money in a bank account at a time when foreign currency accounts were frozen.
The trial was part of a campaign by Hungary's Communist rulers against the Catholic church and the outspoken Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty.
"When I visited him once, later, he told me: the biggest pain was not that they broke nine of my fingers, but that they expelled me to serve (as a priest) in the smallest village of the country," Schirilla said.
"As he rang the bell with his own hands for only two souls to hear it there (in that small village church), I'm ringing the bell for his soul now - these were my last words at the trial."
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