A voice in the silence

The Slovak Cardinal Jan Chryzostom Korec this year celebrated the 60th anniversary of his ordination as bishop. This is something extraordinary for a priest: in the case of the Cardinal, however, it is explicable because he was only 27 years when he was secretly ordained bishop. In this way he became not only the youngest bishop in the world but also the symbol of indomitable faith and of a spirit that could not be crushed and was able to challenge the Communist regime. Author of over 80 publications on faith and the Church, his biography is only now arriving in bookshops. It was written by Mgr. Marian Gavenda who chose as its title: “Infinite Horizons of Cardinal Korec”. The correspondent of SIR Europe’s bureau in Bratislava, Danka Jaceckova, interviewed him.What prompted you to write a biography of Cardinal Korec?“It seems incredible: while so many publications have appeared on so many personalities and events in the recent history of Slovakia and Central and Eastern Europe, the life and work of Cardinal Korec remain unknown in the European context. It is just this silence, this absence of knowledge about him, and, as I would put it, this moral ‘debt’, that prompted me to write the book. One reason why the cardinal has been consigned to the shadows should be sought, it seems to me, also in his sometimes misunderstood positions. Not only during the Communist persecution, but also today the Cardinal has the courage to say things, careless about whether they might be labelled as ‘politically incorrect’. Today no one is thrown into prison for expressing such ideas (as happened during the regime), but often the doors of the mass media are closed to them. Throughout his life the Cardinal never flinched from expressing uncomfortable truths”. What were the decisive events in his life?“Cardinal Korec celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of his ordination as bishop in August this year. It’s a really rare event. The story of his life is altogether something quite exceptional. He entered the novitiate of the Jesuits in 1939 and professed his religious vows in 1941. Having completed his studies of philosophy, he wrote his licence dissertation on ‘Philosophical foundations of dialectical materialism’ in 1946, Two years later he wrote a counter-materialist apologia with the title “On the origin of man”. On the night between 13 and 14 April 1950, the notorious ‘Night of the Barbarians’ (the title of his most famous book), he was interned with at least a hundred other members of religious orders in the monastery of Podolinec, now transformed into a concentration camp. There he continued clandestinely his studies of theology. On 1st October 1950 he was secretly ordained priest and on 24 October 1951, at the age of only 27, ordained bishop. The darkest period of Stalinism was then in progress, when he risked a sentence of 15 years in prison, or even the death penalty, for any of the activities that the young bishop continued undaunted to perform, especially clandestine ordinations to the priesthood. From 1951 he worked as a manual worker in a factory in very harsh conditions. He was imprisoned in 1960 and sentenced to 12 years of detention. After the brutal suppression of the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968, he coordinated the underground activities of the persecuted Church and down to 1984 worked in various humble jobs, the last of which was repairing elevators in the quarters of Bratislava. At the same time he set to write the ‘library of faith’, reacting to the lack of religious literature and the need to clarify the truths of the faith in a modern language. During this period he wrote some 60 of his over 80 books. He was the voice of the Church of silence and author of many open letters to the highest authorities of the regime, denouncing in the most forthright manner all the transgressions of justice and abuses against freedom. In 1990 he was nominated bishop of the most ancient episcopal see in Central Europe, that of Nitra. He was nominated Cardinal in 1991″.How can the Cardinal’s books and his message inspire man today?“It’s his life as a cardinal, utterly unique, noble, suffering and prophetic, that deserves to be better known. We had to wait for John Paul II to visit Nitra in 1995 to tell us this: ‘Cardinal Korec, this name has much to say, and not only in Slovakia, also in the Czech Republic and in Europe as a whole’. At the same time the Cardinal is an icon of the many others who suffered in similar circumstances. His ideas, too, deserve to be better known. Through him the young generations can understand the real face of Communism and reflect on the prophetic meaning of these experiences, because, as the Cardinal said, the experience of a worker-bishop is a laboratory of the Church of the future for which the way of persecution and martyrdom is normal. In my biography the reader will find hitherto unknown aspects of his life, ranging from his experiences in the various jobs he held to the police interrogations to which he had to submit, and his life in prison (for a period he shared a cell with 11 murderers!). The book presents a testimony that contains reflections and evaluations on this period in the life of the Church, in a perspective open to hope”.