Religious Freedom

Prague's Cardinal Duka thanks Australians for helping religious prisoners

Peter Westmore

Contents - Jul 2012 - Buy a copy now Homily: Benedict XVI: Sts Peter and Paul and the priesthood - Pope Benedict XVI Religious Freedom: Prague's Cardinal Duka thanks Australians for helping religious prisoners - Peter Westmore News: The Church Around the World Campus Life: A new model for Catholic university chaplaincy in Brisbane - Br Barry Coldrey Obama and same-sex 'marriage': Shaking his fist at God - Babette Francis The climate alarmist 'religion' and Third World poverty - David Legates Benedict XVI calls for reform of US Catholic higher education - Hilary White Austrian Chancellor's son: How faith helped to survive the Nazis - Michelle Baumann Update: 'Jesus Abandoned' aid reaches the needy in Nigeria - Madonna Brosnan 'Born again': how to change from a nominal to a "living" Christian - Andrew Kania Benedict XVI: Grave threats to the Church's moral witness - Donald R. McClarey Letters: Papal infallibility - Peter D. Howard Letters: Reasons for Hope - Anthony English Letters: Transubstantiation - Frank Mobbs Letters: US religious women - Richard Congram Letters: Anti-Catholicism - Fr. M. Shadbolt Letters: Caritas - P.W. English Letters: Communion reception - Ken Bayliss Letters: Patron Saints - Fred Preshaw Books: ANSWERING THE ANTI-CATHOLIC CHALLENGE, by Robert M. Haddad - Angela Schumann (reviewer) Books: FR ALEXANDER MEN: Martyr of Atheism, by Michel Evdokimov - Michael Daniel (reviewer) Books: THE FACE OF GOD and THE TRUE ICON, by Paul Badde - Paul MacLeod Books: Order books from www.freedompublishing.com.au Letters: The Year of Grace and the New Evangelisation - Fr Dennis Byrnes

Cardinal Dominik Duka, the Archbishop of Prague, has expressed his deep appreciation to Australians who supported religious and political prisoners in his country, including himself, during the Soviet era.

In 1981-82, at a time when he had been denied a licence to serve as a priest, Fr Duka was imprisoned in the notorious Bory prison, after being convicted of being a member of the suppressed Dominican order and of circulating unapproved literature (known as "samizdat").

He was imprisoned during the crackdown on dissent following the release of Charter 77, a human rights declaration originally signed by over 240 prominent citizens of Czechoslovakia.

Charter 77 criticised the government for failing to implement human rights provisions of a number of documents it had signed, including the 1960 Constitution of Czechoslovakia, the Final Act of the 1975 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and UN covenants on political, civil, economic, and cultural rights.

Religious persecution

Fr Duka was imprisoned along with Charter 77 signatories, including the playwright Vaclav Havel who was first President of a free Czechoslovakia after the collapse of Soviet communism in 1989.

At the time of his imprisonment, the persecution of human rights and religious activists was in full swing, with these sent to one of the harshest prisons in Czechoslovakia.

The harrowing conditions in these prisons were documented in a paper, Prison Conditions in Czechoslovakia, written by a US law professor, Herman Schwartz, and published in January 1989 by the Western human rights group, Helsinki Watch.

It said, "Prisons and jails are miserable places but those in Czechoslovakia seem exceptionally inhuman. Inmates are often packed into overcrowded, stuffy, smelly, filthy, dark cells that are too hot or too cold; guards brutally abuse them, physically and verbally; medical care is almost always grossly inadequate; food is usually meagre, tasteless and poor in nutrition; ... prisoners are terrorised by fellow inmates, often with the encouragement of the authorities who give the most hardened criminals official responsibility for discipline, order and work; disciplinary punishments are unfair and harsh; exercise and recreation are usually negligible; religious practices of any kind are prohibited."

Within the Bory prison was a factory to produce high quality Moravian crystal for the Preciosa company, a leading manufacturer of luxury precision-cut lead crystal. Prisoners were forced to work six days a week at least, with three shifts per day, while "wages" were confiscated to pay for their imprisonment.

It was into these conditions that prisoners began receiving letters of encouragement and support from people in Australia and other countries. Many Australians were asked to send letters and postcards to prisoners, at the request of Czech refugees living in Australia and the UK's Keston College, the Centre for the Study of Religion and Communism, which documented religious persecution in the Soviet bloc.

Over a number of years, many thousands of letters and cards were sent to prisoners, of whom Cardinal Duka was one.

He told me, "When we received letters and postcards - from people we did not know in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa - we were astonished and delighted. It lifted our spirits and also ensured that we received better treatment. We were then treated as VIP prisoners, because people outside knew of our existence and our imprisonment."

He asked me to thank personally those who had supported people unjustly imprisoned and persecuted.

Despite his imprisonment, Fr Duka continued to fulfil his vocation as a priest, both within the prison and after his release.

Although the Dominican order had been suppressed after the communist coup in 1948, Fr Duka became a vicar to the Provincial of the Dominicans in 1976, and from 1986-98 he was Provincial in Bohemia and Moravia, including time when the order was still officially illegal.

Communist collapse

During the communist period, he was also required to hold down a job. He worked full-time as a designer in the Skoda factory in Pilsen.

After the communist collapse in 1989, he was able to publicly serve as a priest and also became a lecturer in the Faculty of Theology at the Palacký University in Olomouc.

He was elected President of the Conference of Major Religious Superiors in Czechoslovakia and in the years 1992-1996, Vice-President of the Union of European Conferences of Major Superiors.

In 1998, John Paul II made him a bishop and in 2010 he was consecrated as the Archbishop of Prague.

At the time of this appointment he said, "The Church must engage in a dialogue with society and must seek reconciliation with it. Twenty years ago, we were euphoric about freedom; today we live in an economic and financial crisis, and also to a certain extent in a crisis of values. So the tasks are going to be a little more difficult. But thanks to everything that's been done, it will not be a journey into the unknown."

Cardinal Duka was very interested in the state of the Catholic Church in Australia, and in the battle over same-sex "marriage" here, particularly the efforts of all those working to preserve the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 25 No 6 (July 2012), p. 3