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Volume 9 1948~1951

Doc No.
Date
Subject

No. 263 NAI DFA/6/410/68 part 1

Letter from Seán Murphy to Seán MacBride (Dublin)
(118/24) (87/49)

Paris, 8 February 1949

Dear Minister,
With reference to my letter of February 7th, 1949,1 regarding the Aide-mémoire on Cardinal Mindszenty's arrest and trial, I was today asked by Monsieur Paris,2 Directeur de l'Europe, to come and see him in relation to the Aide-mémoire which I had left with M. Chauvel.3

M. Paris said to me that it was now obviously too late to support our request seeing that the afternoon papers here carried the verdict of life imprisonment against the Cardinal.4 He explained that M. Schuman refrained from intervening up to date in the fear that he might only increase the difficulties of the situation. M. Paris stated, however, that M. Schuman now intends to ask the Hungarian Minister in Paris to come to see him and to tell him in no uncertain language that the French Government were very opposed and disgusted with the verdict.

Yours sincerely,
Seán Murphy

1 Not printed.

2 Jacques Camille Paris (1902-53), Director of European Affairs, French Foreign Ministry; Secretary General of the Council of Europe (1949-53).

3 Jean Chauvel (1897-1979), Secretary General of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1946-9).

4 On 8 February 1949 Mindszenty was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason. He was released from prison during the October 1956 Hungarian Revolution but, following the Soviet invasion of Hungary in November 1956, Mindszenty sought exile in the United States Embassy in Budapest where he remained until 1971. He then went into exile in Austria, living in Vienna until his death in 1973.

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