Cardinal Czerny beatifies Czech priests killed by communists, hints more may follow

A major spiritual event in the Czech Republic and the biggest day in the history of the Diocese of Brno drew thousands of people and the attention of national media in one of Europeʼs most secular societies.

The beatification Mass of two priests killed by the communist regime in Czechoslovakia was not “the Church moralizing” but “an offer of forgiveness and hope,” as the martyrs showed that “conscience is not luxury.”

That is what Cardinal Michael Czerny said in a homily on June 6 in his hometown of Brno, where, as papal legate for Pope Leo XIV, he declared Jan Bula and Václav Drbola the first beatified of the diocese and the first martyrs of the past totalitarian regimes on the territory of todayʼs Czech Republic. The two will be commemorated annually on June 17 in the Churchʼs liturgical calendar.

“Blessed Jan and Václav call us not to sell truth for comfort or to avoid conflict, not to exchange faith for the approval of others, not to choose silence where witness should be given, not to sacrifice conscience for comfort, career, or conformism,” the cardinal stressed.

“These all look like good sense,” the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development admitted, yet they “are really foolish betrayals of human dignity, freedom, and integrity.”

The priests Jan Bula (1920–1952) and Václav Drbola (1912–1951) were popular with their parishioners, active in community life, and loyal to the bishops. They were imprisoned without cause and accused of complicity in the killing of three communists, although they were already in prison at the time. They were executed after a staged trial in the early 1950s.

“Their guilt, in the eyes of the regime, did not consist in violence but in the fact that they refused to betray their priestly conscience. They did not wish to become instruments of ideology and repression,” the cardinal clarified.

“Each of us is invited to identify with them, with their time and place,” he suggested, adding that “when they were martyred, I was a 5-year-old boy with my family who had fled [communist Czechoslovakia] in 1948 and taken refuge in Montreal, Canada.”

Czerny was born in Brno 80 years ago and was naturalized in Canada. As he told EWTN News, celebrating Mass for the occasion in his hometown was “very moving.”

He even practiced Czech in recent months to read the homily in the Slavic language. The Mass drew 13,000 people and was widely covered by national media in one of the most secular countries in Europe.

Asked by a local outlet whether other Czech priests killed by communists might be beatified, the cardinal responded that “you can assume that it will happen, but we cannot comment,” referring to the strict criteria for beatification, which fall to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.