Czech Priests Murdered by Communists Beatified as Martyrs
Two Czech priests murdered by the communist regime have been beatified as martyrs, in a ceremony that may open the door to more victims of communism being formally recognised by the Church.
Cardinal Michael Czerny declared Fathers Jan Bula and Václav Drbola the Czech Republic’s first martyrs of communism during a beatification ceremony in front of over 13,000 people in Brno.
Both priests were executed in the early 1950s after being caught up in fabricated communist show trials.
The regime accused them in connection with the so-called Babice case, a notorious communist-era prosecution used to crush Catholic resistance and intimidate believers.
Father Drbola was executed in 1951. Father Bula was executed in 1952.
Jan Bula wrote in one of his letters from death row (the day before his execution): “My greatest source of strength is the knowledge that I served God faithfully to the end. A person can never love God enough, and that is the only thing
one must regret.“
Their beatification means the Catholic Church now recognises them as having died for the faith.
Cardinal Czerny, whose own family fled communist Czechoslovakia, said their witness showed how Christian courage could survive even under totalitarian pressure.
According to EWTN, Czerny also said that more Czech victims of communism may follow them on the path toward beatification.
“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 said.
“Each of us is invited to identify with them, with their time and place,” he said, 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.”