Máriapócs is a small town in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary. It lies near Nyíregyháza. It is an important place for pilgrimage. It has a Byzantine Catholic church, which houses the Weeping Madonna, an enormous ornate iconostasis that now takes pride of place above the altar. This icon is not the original, but an 18th-century copy. The original one is kept in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna.
History
The Pócs of Paulus (Paul) from the Hungarian name. According to the linguists, Pócs may have belonged to the first group of settlements in the county. The prefix of the name Mary was added in the 18th century as a reference to the shrine of Mary in the village .
The name of Pócs was first mentioned in the diplomas in 1280 , its owners may have been members of the Hontpázmány genus around this time , who sued for the right of ownership of the settlement. It is mentioned in the early 1300s as the property of the Gutkeled clan . Around 1354 it belonged to the estates of the Ecsedi castle . In the 1600s it was owned by members of the Báthori family .
Later, members of the royal family and the Rákóczi family also owned Pócs. In 1696 , the icon of the Virgin Mary, tearing in her church, brought Pócs its fame. In 1724 , Count Sándor Károlyi and the Szennyei family acquired partial ownership here.
Between 1731 and 1749 , the present – day Church of St. Michael and the Basilica Monastery named after St. Vazul the Great were built for the image of the devotion and for the reviving pilgrimage . They were the caretakers of the shrine until their dispersal in 1950 .
In 1749 , the basilica monks settled here and began building their convent. The monastery became a center of culture and education for Greek Catholics , and the teacher training here trained cantor teachers here for almost a century.
Until 1758 , Count Károlyi ceded the estate to the Basilian order. From 1816 to 1872 it was a market town with the right to hold fairs . 1991 . August 18, II. Pope John Paul II also visited here, at which time he also pontiffed an Eastern rite mass in Hungarian, in the presence of 150,000 believers at the open-air altar erected next to the church.
The town regained its city status in 1993 .
Main sights
Máriapócs is a world-famous Máriapócs National Shrine ; its reputation is due to the Greek Catholic Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary . Its sights are also in the birthplace of the Greek Catholic Bishop Miklós Dudás of the Basilica Collection . There is also a Turul statue in the village .
In 2015, the Cultural Center suitable for holding the annual Art Gala of the Music School was handed over.
