Ladislav Nemet

The native form of this personal name is Német László. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

His Eminence Ladislav Nemet S.V.D.
Cardinal, Metropolitan Archbishop of Belgrade
Német in 2009
Church	Roman Catholic
Archdiocese	Belgrade
Appointed	5 November 2022
Predecessor	Stanislav Hočevar
Other post(s)	Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria Stella Maris (2024–)
Previous post(s)	Bishop of Zrenjanin (2008–22)
Orders
Ordination	1 May 1983 by Matiša Zvekanović
Consecration	5 July 2008 by Péter Erdő
Created cardinal	7 December 2024 by Pope Francis
Rank	Cardinal-Priest
Personal details
Born	(1956-09-07) September 7, 1956 Odžaci, FPR Yugoslavia
Nationality	Serbian
Coat of arms

Ladislav Nemet SVD (Serbian Cyrillic: Ладислав Немет, Hungarian: Német László; born 7 September 1956) is a Serbian-born ethnic-Hungarian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who has worked in Serbia as Archbishop of Belgrade since November 2022 and before that as the Bishop of Zrenjanin from 2008 to 2022. He is a member of the Society of the Divine Word (Verbites). He was made a cardinal on 7 December 2024 by Pope Francis.

Before becoming a bishop he was educated and filled positions in several countries, studying in Poland and Rome, working as a missionary and pastor in the Philippines, teaching and collaborating on the Vatican's diplomatic efforts in Austria, doing pastoral work and teaching in Croatia, and then taking on several assignments in Hungary. He has been the President of the International Episcopal Conference of Saints Cyril and Methodius since 2016.

Biography

Ladislav Nemet was born on 7 September 1956 in Odžaci, then in the People's Republic of Serbia, Yugoslavia, into a family of ethnic Hungarians, a significant group in the multi-ethnic Vojvodina Province; Nemet refers to himself as a Hungarian. His role models were a local priest and an uncle who was secretly a Verbite in Hungary under the Communists, who recommended the order as a path to broader experience, telling Nemet that "a diocese is too small for you".

He attended the secondary school Gymnasium Paulinum in Subotica from 1971 to 1976. He joined the Society of the Divine Word, completed his studies in philosophy and theology in Pieniezno, Poland, and there took his perpetual vows on 8 September 1982. He received his master's degree from the Catholic University of Lublin on 7 April 1983. He was ordained a priest in Odžaci on 17 April 1983. He spent his first two years as a priest doing pastoral work in Croatia.

He studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome from 1985 to 1987. While there he worked in a parish in Fiumicino and was thrilled to experience a parish of young people with an average age of 35 and with many active community groups of a sort unknown in Yugoslavia. He worked as a missionary in the Philippines and a chaplain at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City from 1987 to 1990, He later said he learned how the shortage of priests meant that "the laity do much more for the church than the official structures", something "incomprehensible" to Europeans who are "bishop and priest focused".

He returned to Rome and obtained a doctorate in dogmatic theology from the Gregorian in 1994. He then moved to Austria, where he held the following positions: professor of theology in Mödling, prefect of St. Gabriel's parish there, and assistant in a nearby parish; collaborator of the Mission of the Holy See in Vienna at the Office of the United Nations and specialized agencies from 2000 to 2004, serving at the same time as professor of theology in Zagreb.

He was provincial of the Hungarian Province of the Verbites from February 2004 to May 2007. In July 2006 he became Secretary General of the Hungarian Catholic Bishops' Conference and taught missiology at the Sapientia College of Theology for Religious Orders in Budapest. In addition to Hungarian and Serbian, he speaks English, German, Polish, Italian and Croatian.

On 23 April 2008, Pope Benedict XVI named him bishop of Zrenjanin in Serbia. He received his episcopal consecration on 5 July 2008 from Cardinal Péter Erdő, Archbishop of Budapest, with Archbishop Juliusz Janusz, Apostolic Nuncio to Hungary, and Bishop László Huzsvár, his predecessor in Zrenjanin, as co-consecrators. Though this meant returning to the region of his birth in Serbia, he said he felt no attachment to it after 33 years away and could happily work anywhere. As bishop he organized a diocesan synod between 2017 and 2021, well before Pope Francis–Nemet later pointed out–undertook his program for synods throughout the Church.

He is president of the International Episcopal Conference of Saints Cyril and Methodius, which comprises Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia, elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2021.

Throughout the winter of 2019/20 he sought medical attention for help with "burnout and depression". He said the experience left him less focused on perfectionism and more frank in conversation, to the astonishment of his priests.

On 5 November 2022, Pope Francis appointed him Archbishop of Belgrade. He was installed there on 10 December.

He was elected one of the two vice-presidents of the Council of the Bishops' Conferences of Europe (CCEE) on 25 September 2021.

Assessing a pan-European synod in February 2023, he praised the Germans for their theological tradition and international mission work, declining to criticize their approach to synodality. He noted that their concerns were widely shared, if differently expressed, by other national synods, including those of eastern Europe, which underscored "the tension between pastoral care and teaching" with respect to the status of women in the Church and exclusions based on sexual orientation. He said: "We need to see the suffering person behind every path of life and how much suffering we ourselves cause to people when we hate." Asked specifically about the LGBT community, he said: "I do not understand what we lose if we finally begin to experience without fear the infinite and overflowing, unimaginable love of God for each person." He added that gender theory "is based on real scientific results", it is "now a generally accepted medical fact that not all people are born male or female", that some experience "emotional or hormonal states that differ from the physiological reality that characterizes women and men", and that "these people are children of God just like you or me".

On 6 October 2024, Pope Francis announced that he planned to make Nemet a cardinal on 8 December, a date that was later changed to 7 December. He is the first person from Serbia to be named to the College of Cardinals. He said he thought Pope Francis chose him for his commitment to the synodal process, noting that he had held a diocesan synod in Zrenjanin "before Covid...even before the Pope started the synodal renewal of the universal church". He also recognized that there would be political reactions to his appointment in the Serbian and Croatian press, both favorable and critical.

On 7 December 2024, Pope Francis made him a cardinal, assigning him as a member of the order of cardinal priests the title of Santa Maria Stella Maris in Lido di Ostia (Rome).

Asked in 2021 what he prayed for, Nemet said: "Peace and tranquility, so that I can accept my boundaries and the people I work with. I don’t ask for anything else, I have everything else." In a February 2023 interview he said his life's mission is to work "for the benefit of people, so that people do not divide, but think constructively together, respect each other, do not hurt each other, regardless of what anyone thinks, believes, what their skin color or gender identity is, and in the process find God in their lives".

See also

• Catholic Church in Serbia
• Cardinals created by Pope Francis

External links

• Bishop Ladislav Nemet, S.V.D. on Catholic Hierarchy
• Archdiocese of Belgrade biography