Josef Radim JANČÁŘ (1951)

Portrét

In tough moments I hid church samizdat in an organ

Josef Radim Jančář was born on 25 May 1951 in Těšov near Uherský Brod, where he spent his entire childhood and part of his adolescence. Though he had already been considering a vocation as a Catholic priest in his final year at school he first enrolled at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Brno University of Technology. After his first year he decided once and for all that he would become a cleric. In 1970 he began studying at a seminary in Litoměřice. Since their accession to power the Communists regarded holy orders as a threat, which is why in April 1951 they crushed the priesthood with Operation K and later female orders through Operation R. After this becoming a cleric meant going illegal and being ordained in secret. And this is what Josef dreamt of. First he wanted to become a Jesuit, but he didn’t know any. Later he got to know the Carmelite Metoděj František Minarčík, who shaped him spiritually and later secretly ordained him.                

After completing year two at the seminary in Litoměřice all the theology students had to undergo military service. By a miracle Josef was stationed at Týniště nad Orlicí, mere kilometres from where Father Minarčík ministered. “God must have organised that. When I was on release I could continue in my clerical formation. So by forcing us to do military service, the Communists in the end did something good for the church.” Throughout his military service Josef regularly visited Father Minarčík, without his senior officers ever finding out. But they did mind that he attended mass in uniform, bringing disgrace on the army. “I told them: ‘It’s OK with me. Just let me go in my civvies and I’ll go in my civvies. You can’t bar me from attending church. That’s my civil right and I don’t give up my civil rights as a soldier.’” After two years Josef returned to the seminar.

Following the launch of Charter 77 Josef wanted to support its declaration criticising the state authorities for not adhering to human rights in Czechoslovakia. He and other theology students duplicated it in their rooms. In a wardrobe they had 10 cassette recorders, which were running non-stop, copying the Charter 77 Declaration on the music carrier of the day: tapes. Josef was due to be ordained that year. However a week beforehand the State Security turned up and the interrogations began. “Interestingly, they selected a person from each room who was, I would say, kind of mentally fragile. And they interrogated those people all day.” Among those due for ordination on 25 June 1977 were two secret clerics, the Carmelite Josef Jančář and the Salesian Emil Matušů. Both were barred from getting ordained. Most likely because the State Security (StB) had discovered while questioning theology students that the pair were illegal clerics and also spreaders of Charter 77. However in the end they did receive permission to get ordained, along with a recommendation that they continue in theology: “We flatly rejected that, because at that time doing a theology doctorate meant signing up to cooperate with the State Security.”                                          

Following his ordination Josef became the second chaplain at the parish of St. Mořic in Olomouc, a city where a group publishing mainly religious literature had been operating for some years. They had managed to put out around 50 titles in significant print runs, as well as numerous other publications. Josef willingly joined this well-oiled group. He gathered supplies of paper to print and published samizdat intended for distribution. However, in September 1979 the illegal group was uncovered. Within one day the StB arrested several members, such as Father František Lízna, and placed them in custody. “Then there was the investigation, which was a very tough time for us, because we never knew at what moment they’d come for us. And just then they were, for instance, going around Olomouc paper shops asking if I’d bought paper there. I hadn’t. Others bought it and it was stored at my place,” says Josef Jančář, who avoided arrest. However, people around him were forced to undergo interrogations. When they arrested his friend, Father Antonín Krupka, it was clear the noose was tightening. “I quickly prepared all the samizdat I had at home and the books one wasn’t supposed to read and the whole night carried them to the Church of St. Mořic, where the organist, Antonín Schindler, advised me to put it all in the back of the organ. Not in the machine but right in the innards of the organ, where I had to crawl on my belly. So I brought it there, and that’s where it stayed till the revolution.”

Josef’s transfer from Olomouc to Hranice na Moravě was sparked by an incident at midnight mass at Christmas 1979. During Josef’s time at the parish house in Hranice the StB kept a file with the codename HRAD on him and began to monitor and harass him more. Josef worked with children and youths outside the church, which was classified as a crime at that time. He was also involved in underground church activities. Several colleagues from the clergy were informing on him. One day the regional church secretary Kratochvíl and vicar general Dr. Jaroslav Kůřil visited him at his parish. “I basically underwent a very tough eight-hour interrogation. The regional secretary attacked me from all sides. They claimed to know everything about me, but they didn’t know a thing. They threatened that they could get rid of me. That they could discredit me. That they could put some sexual affair on me and that I wouldn’t wriggle out of it. They told me that openly. That I could lose my permit.”

In the end they forced so much work on Josef that he almost collapsed. He oversaw church repairs and was allocated several more villages, where he had to serve mass. He also taught religious education. He was also frequently summoned to StB interrogations, where they attempted to break and recruit him. In vain. The StB closed the file entitled HRAD on him in 1985. 

After the revolution Josef Radim Jančář became a judge at the Olomouc Church Court. In 1977 he went to Rome to study canon law. There he was elected to the post of general prosecutor – the Carmelites’ representative in the Vatican – twice in succession. In 2014 he returned to his homeland, where until 2022 he was still serving as both a church court judge and a cleric with the Olomouc Carmelites.