Pope Benedict XVI will officially welcome a host of new cardinals into the Catholic Church in Rome on Feb. 18 at the midday Angelus for the celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany, the official Vatican Radio reported on Friday. Among them is the 36th Archbishop of Prague, Czech priest Dominik Duka, the 22nd cardinal coming from the Bohemian and Moravian dioceses.
The Presidential Office said it considers the Pope’s decision an obliging gesture towards the Czech Republic and an appreciation of Duka’s previous work. “I am glad that with the appointment, Benedict XVI has made it quite clear whom he wants to have by his side in the highest church hierarchy at a difficult time in a contradictory world,” said President Václav Klaus — who is an occaisional hiking partner of Duka — as cited by Czech News Agency (ČTK).
Duka was born in the Czech city of Hradec Králové in April 1943, when Czechoslovakia was under Nazi occupation (and known to the Third Reich as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia). Ordained as a priest in 1970, he was deprived by the Communist authorities of the state authorization for the sacred ministry in 1975.
Duka then worked for almost 15 years in the factories of Škoda Plzeň, as a clerk and designer — but throughout worked in secret in the Dominican Order as a novice master and teacher of theology; in the early 1980s, Duka was jailed for more than a year for his underground church activities.
The secreted man of the cloth spent time in jail with former dissident playwright Václav Havel, the late first post-communist president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the independent Czech Republic. They met at the Plzeň-Bory prison in 1981 (Havel wore the prison no. 655 and Duka no. 9658).Duka led the pre-Christmas funeral mass for Havel.
After the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, he was elected Federal President of the Conference of Major Superiors and in the years 1992-1996, Vice-President of the Union of European Conferences of Major Superiors. From 1990-99, he was a lecturer in the Faculty of Theology at the Palacký University in Olomouc, teaching Introduction to Sacred Scripture and biblical anthropology.
Duka was named bishop of Hradec Králové, his hometown, in 1998 and served in that role until being named Archbishop of Prague by the Pope in February 2010, succeeding Cardinal Miloslav Vlk at the helm of the oldest Czech diocese, and as the unofficial head of Roman Catholics in the Czech Republic. Vlk, who turns 80 in May, is the Archbishop Emeritus of Prague, and was considered a papabile (a possible candidate for a new Pope) to succeed John Paul II.
Czech Position broke the story in December that two Czech priests were under consideration to be named cardinal — Duka and Tomáš Halík, whom Pope Benedict XVI granted the title of Monsignor–Honorary Prelate of His Holiness two years ago. Cardinals play a role in the church’s administration, advise the papacy on various issues, and, if they are younger than 80, can elect the pope. For the full list of new cardinals to be named on Feb. 18, click here.
