Vilmos Hirth, SVD, was born on December 12, 1932, in Mágocs to a Catholic family of German descent. Following World War II, his family was resettled in Austria in 1946. In 1947, he entered the Society of the Divine Word and completed his studies at the St. Gabriel Mission Center in Austria. He took his final vows there and was ordained a priest on September 8, 1959. From 1962 onward, he served as a missionary in Paraguay for three decades: as an assistant pastor and parish priest in Encarnación, and later as a bishop’s secretary and pastor in Asunción. He returned to Hungary in 1992, where he served as provincial superior of the Hungarian Divine Word Missionaries until 2004. He played a key role in reorganizing the Hungarian Divine Word Missionaries community following the change of regime and in strengthening the missionary spirit. He passed away on January 23, 2021, in Szombathely.