Reading a pastoral letter
On Sunday, June 19, 1949, Josef Zlámal read out a pastoral letter called "the Voice of the bishops and the ordinaries to the believers in the hour of a great test" in the Basilica in Hejnice. This document was prepared a few days earlier at a secret meeting of the Czechoslovak Roman-Catholic bishops as a response to the anti-religious policy of the communist regime. The Letter, which was read out in many churches across the country on the religious day of the Corpus Christi, contained an explanation of what was happening at that time and was still to be expected in the future. The state security police (StB) tried to hamper the reading in every possible way, even in Hejnice: "In the church, when I was reading out the pastoral letter, I noticed a snitch – popularly speaking – hiding behind a pillar. When I finished reading the letter, I said: 'these are the bishop's words and they are binding for all of you Catholics in this parish, even for the gentleman that's standing behind the pillar in the back'. Later, when I went to court, this was considered as an aggravating circumstance. I had no fear. On the contrary, I read it out in defiance. I had at hand the help of one chaplain, two Franciscans and one Polish priest to cover five parishes that had remained abandoned after the expulsion of the German priests. All five priests read out the letter." For having read out the pastoral letter, Mr. Zlámal was sentenced to six, later ten years in prison.
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Josef Zlámal
Josef Zlámal was born on July 1st 1915 in Halenkovice in Moravia. He studied at the Archbishop grammar school in Kroměříž and in 1936 he entered the archdiocese seminary in Olomouc, where he studied at the eventual Prague archbishop František Tomášek. Josef Zlámal was ordained a priest by a German bishop (standing in for bishop Leopold Prečan, who had been seriously ill and later interned in his residence). He was transferred to Ptení near Prostějov as a priest and he served at several different parishes during the war. After 1945, he moved to the Litoměřice diocese as a friar. In 1949, he was arrested in Hejnice near Frýdlant for reading from the Shepherd's letter and sentenced to six years in prison. For his allusion to the Jewish origin of the judge, his sentence was augmented to ten years. Until 1959, he was imprisoned in Liberec, Bory, Mírov, Kutná Hořa and in Valdice. After the release, he worked in manual positions until 1967 when he could return to ecclesiastical service. In 1972, he was titled by the Austrian province of the Knights of Malta with the title of honorary Magistral Chaplain. It was a symbolical honor for his help to German members of the order during the displacement of Germans after the war. In 1989, Josef Zlámal was called from the parish in Hrubý Jeseník near Nymburk to Prague to take the place after the deceased father Horký and to become the prior of the order. He passed through the compulsory novitiate until 1994 when he took the service as a prior. In 2004, he was decorated by the president with the highest state decoration, the Order of the White Lion
