Sacred Heart Church – Draž (Darázs)
The Sacred Heart Church in Draž (Darázs) is a pilgrimage church on the northern slope of the Bansko Brdo (Báni-hegy) hills in northern Baranja (Drávaszög), and the spiritual centre of the village's Hungarian community. Its annual feast, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, is today the greatest celebration of the Hungarians of Draž.
Draž is first mentioned in writing in 1263; in the Middle Ages it belonged to the Herczeg family of Szekcső, but after 1526 it was deserted. After the liberation from Ottoman rule in 1687, Šokci from Bosnia settled here, and the village became part of the Belje (Bellye) estate, which after the death of Prince Eugene of Savoy passed to the crown and later to members of the House of Habsburg. In 1910, 781 of its 2,259 inhabitants declared themselves Hungarian, and almost the entire population was Roman Catholic.
There are two Catholic churches in the village. The parish church is a Baroque-Classicist building dedicated to St Barbara and built in 1839; the Sacred Heart Church was built before the First World War on the initiative of parish priest Kornél Dezső Újlaki and consecrated in 1925. This historicist church, with a tower nearly 30 metres high, is the church of the Hungarians of Draž: Hungarian-language Masses, baptisms, weddings and the feast-day celebration are all held here.
At the beginning of the war of the 1990s the village came under Serb occupation, its Croat population fled, and the parish church was badly damaged. In 2020 the Sacred Heart Church was renovated with the support of the Hungarian government, as part of the church restoration programme of the Democratic Community of Hungarians in Croatia (HMDK): a retaining wall was built against rainwater running off the hillside, the attic and tower stairs were repaired and the interior was repainted. In spring 2025 the cracked, more than century-old bell was replaced by a new one, also funded from Hungary.
Pilgrimage feast: on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Friday following the second Sunday after Pentecost (usually in June), when a festive Mass in Hungarian is celebrated, organised by the HMDK together with the local Hungarian heritage association.
Visiting: Draž lies about 44 km north of Osijek by road, close to the Hungarian–Serbian–Croatian tripoint and about 24 km from Mohács. The church stands above the village on the slope of the hills. A visit combines well with Batina (Kiskőszeg) on the Danube, about 5 km away.
Sources: Wikipedia – Darázs (Draž), Croatia · Képes Újság – Sacred Heart Day, the greatest feast of the Hungarians of Darázs · Képes Újság – A new bell in the tower of the Sacred Heart Church in Darázs · HMDK – Large-scale renovations of our churches continue
Photo: Pasztilla aka Attila Terbócs / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photo: Pasztilla aka Attila Terbócs / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Town:
Draž (Darázs)
