Monsignor Josef Mixa

“One day the bishop from the ministry of culture came and said: “You have to immediately leave Prague, you mustn’t even say goodbye to your church members. You have two options, either you go to the border regions or you will be imprisoned.” So I said to myself that it’s probably better to leave than to be locked up. The bishop was, however, naive because he told himself: “He’ll just spent two years there, then the things will get sorted out.” And it wasn’t true, it only kept getting worse. The pressure was more and more perfected even if they did it in quite an inconspicuous way. They came up with another trick though, since I refused to cooperate, they had a State Security agent watch me, she was also a KGB member.”

“I started teaching at a high school here in 1990. There were a few young people interested in Christianity so I visited them, I had classes there. Subsequently they started working with me. They met their partners. If they weren’t baptised I would also baptise them. New marriages, new children. I have already baptised about sixty kids born to these couples that I taught at this high school. And they’re doing great to this day. (“That’s a huge achievement.” – coordinator Lukáš Květoň, ed. note). That was also in Prague but on a much bigger scale. What’s interesting is that these people still keep in touch with me and now during the ninetieth anniversary the church was full of these people of mine and little children came to participate. Those are children of the children that I raised here.”