László Német

Ladislav Nemet SVD (, ; born 7 September 1956) is a Hungarian-Serbian prelate of the 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 credited his time in Catholic countries such as Poland and the Philippines with strengthening him for work in his episcopal assignments where he is part of a religious minority. He has been the President of the International Episcopal Conference of Saints Cyril and Methodius since 2016.

Biography Early years and career Ladislav Nemet was born on 7 September 1956 in Odžaci, then in the People's Republic of Serbia, Yugoslavia, 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 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. 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 worked for the Mission of the Holy See in Vienna at its representation to the United Nations and specialized agencies from 2000 to 2004 and at the same time taught as professor of Jesuit faculty of theology in Zagreb. During his years in Hungary, he worked as a pastor and celebrated Mass in the Croatian language for members of the Balkan diaspora. In addition to Hungarian and Serbian, he speaks English, German, Polish, Italian and Croatian. 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. The service was conducted principally in Hungarian; the other languages used were Bulgarian, Croatian, German, and Latin. 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. which comprises Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. In that capacity he participated in his first Vatican synod, the Synod on the New Evangelization, in October 2012, where he was chosen relator of the German-language working group.

He represented CEICEM at the second year of the Synod of Bishops on the Family in October 2015. He thought it important that the Synod discussed the increasing challenges of interfaith marriage, cultures where trial marriages and polygamy were the norm, the legal recognition granted to partnerships the Church does not consider marriage, and the challenges of widowhood and single parenting. He welcomed a new emphasis on human relationships that might allow some living outside the Church's norms to participate in the life of the Church, and the focus on the longevity of relationships, which is critical for children, despite the pressures of economic dislocation and relocation. He praised efforts to protect women from abuse and to value their social role, while objecting to the promotion of same-sex parenting and denying children recognition as boys and girls. and re-elected in 2021. (The requirements to be met at the outset, he wrote, were "that the couples have been living together for a long time, leading an exemplary life, and that faith and ecclesial community life are important to them".) He said the CCEE's "greatest challenge" was "to give Europe a new spirituality, a new soul".

Archbishop and cardinal On 5 November 2022, Pope Francis appointed him Archbishop of Belgrade. He was installed there on 10 December. In addition to Catholic prelates from several Eastern European countries, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Porfirije attended. As he took up his post in Belgrade he assessed the ethnic-religious issues he faced. He dismissed the longstanding dispute between the Catholic Church in Croatia and the Orthodox Church in Serbia as "their problem, not our problem". He said Serbian Catholicism, composed of 70% Hungarian speakers and 30% Slavs of many nations, needed to assert its own identity and discover its potential. He pointed out that the young Roman Catholics of Serbia spoke Serbian and found reliance on liturgical texts in Croatian or Hungarian alienating.

As president of CEICEM he participated as a delegate in the Synod of Bishops on Synodality in 2023 and 2024.

He assessed the Synod's work enthusiastically for including lay men and women, and he cited its lessons in dialogue and listening, for demonstrating the need for transparency and accountability on the part of bishops. He interpreted its work on the role of women in the Church as making concrete how decentralization will allow "each local church will look at its situation, its culture and its needs, where more can be given to women", even as "different forms of expression" are governed by Rome, which ensures "the principle of unity. He cited the permanent diaconate and "blessings for couples in same-sex relationships" as models, implemented to varying degrees across the Catholic world.

When the Vatican offered guidance in December 2023 that allowed for priests to bless same-sex couples, and the reaction from eastern European prelates was largely negative, Nemet endorsed the initiative. He said there could be no blessing of a same-sex union itself, but that a same-sex couple requesting a blessing meant the world was "discovering truths ... faster than we do on the basis of biblical revelation and tradition".

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 may also be the first cardinal from a country with an Orthodox Christian majority.) Nemet's responded that similar nationalist reactions in both Croatia and Serbia did "not correspond at all to the Catholic consciousness", that Francis aimed simply to strengthen the Church in Serbia.

On 11 January 2025, he was named a member of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity.

He participated as a cardinal elector in the 2025 papal conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV.