Catholic Relic Arrives For Hungarian Anniversary Celebrations.

Pieces of the skull of King St. Stephen I, who founded the Hungarian state one thousand years ago,arrived here Thursday on a special loan from Croatia for Hungary's millennium anniversary celebrations. The skull pieces, along with bone fractures also attributed to Hungary's founder, arrived at Budapest Ferihegy Airport in a richly ornamented silver casque sealed into an aluminum holder. On August 20 Hungarians begin celebrating the 1,000th anniversary of the foundation of Christian Hungary. In order to borrow the relic a series of cultural accords have been signed, and Budapest has had to put up a DEM 300,000 (EUR 150,000, USD 139,000) guarantee for the Croatian monastary which is home to the bones, said Zsolt Semjen, deputy state secretary of the Ministry for National Cultural Heritage. The relic are scheduled to be paraded in the capital in a Catholic procession on Sunday, before being briefly exhibited in the Basilica of Esztergom in the north of Hungary, the seat of the Hungarian Catholic Church. The relic will then return to Budapest to be displayed in the capital's St. Stephen Basilica for the rest of the year, church sources said.