Oszkár Sólymos (originally Oszkár Schmidbauer; August 3, 1872, – Canada, 1938) was a Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Esztergom, a catechist, one of the early organizers of Regnum Marianum, and later a pastor to Hungarian communities in the United States and Canada. His place of birth, as well as the exact place and date of his death, are not yet known.

He was ordained a priest on October 8, 1895. He was a priest of the Archdiocese of Esztergom; in 1906, according to an archdiocesan circular, he was transferred (dimissus) to the Diocese of Székesfehérvár. In 1897, he served as a tutor for the family of Count Wenckheim; thereafter, he was an assistant pastor in Kőhídgyarmat until 1900. Between 1900 and 1902, he worked as a religion teacher at an elementary school in Budapest, and from 1902 to 1906, he served as director of the Philippinum Institute and president of the St. Joseph Congregation in the 7th District.

One of the most important chapters of his work in Budapest was connected to the formation of what would later become Regnum Marianum. At the urging of Ottokár Prohászka, during the 1897–1898 school year, young religious education teachers in Budapest, under Sólymos’s leadership, began to work systematically with high school boys. This Oratorian-inspired priestly community and its youth ministry became one of the direct precursors to Regnum Marianum; Sólymos was among its first organizers and also played a role in establishing the community’s institutional framework.

In 1906, he left Hungary and moved to North America. In 1907, he served as an assistant pastor in Cleveland; then, from September 1907 until 1910, he was the pastor of the Hungarian parish of Our Lady of Hungarians in Northampton, Pennsylvania. In 1910, he served for a short time in Dayton, Ohio.

In the early 1910s, he carried out missionary work in Canada, primarily in the province of Saskatchewan, among Hungarian settlers living in scattered communities. Traveling from settlement to settlement, he visited Hungarian farmers, celebrated Mass, heard confessions, and organized communities; his work in the Wakaw area is also documented. He reported on his experiences in Canada to Catholic newspapers in Hungary. A letter he published in 1911 paints a vivid picture of the difficulties of the Hungarian mission on the prairie: the vast distances, the scattered farmsteads, and the fact that, in addition to his pastoral work, the Hungarian priest had to familiarize himself with the settlers’ daily lives. He also made efforts to obtain a Rákóczi flag from Hungary for the Hungarian community in Canada.

In September 1913, he returned to the United States and took over the leadership of St. Stephen’s Hungarian Parish in Toledo. In 1915, he moved to Akron, where he played a key role in the independent organization of the local Hungarian Catholic community and became the founding pastor of the Hungarian parish of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. At the same time, he also provided pastoral care to the Hungarian Catholics in nearby Barberton. His ministry in Akron can be traced at least until December 1918.

Later, he moved back to Canada and continued his work among the Hungarian settlers in Saskatchewan. In the 1920s, he served in the Plunkett area and the vicinity of the Szent László settlement. When Bishop István Á. Hanauer of Vác visited the Hungarian communities in Canada in 1926, his journey included a stop at the Szent László settlement, which was under Sólymos’s care. By 1929, Sólymos was listed in sources as the parish priest of the settlement; it was then that he blessed the memorial column erected in memory of Menyhért Érdujhelyi during a ceremony attended by several hundred Hungarians.

He spent the final years of his life in Saskatchewan. He passed away in Canada in 1938.

Cikke jelent meg az Alkotmány c. újság 1911. évi 141. számában