Josef Toufar
Josef Toufar (born July 14, 1902 in Arnolec , † February 25, 1950 in Prague ) was a Czech Catholic priest and a victim of communist persecution by the Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia .
Life
Josef Toufar was a trained carpenter and only began to study theology in Hradec Králové as a late career . He was ordained a priest at the age of 38 . In 1940 to 1948 he was in Zahrádka , from the year 1948 in the municipality Číhošť at Ledeč nad Sázavou as pastor operates.
The miracle of Číhošť
In February 1950 Toufar was accused of staging the so-called "Miracle of Číhošť". After a mass in the church there on December 11, 1949, visitors to the service reported that the 50 cm high crucifix had moved from side to side a few times. During the Christmas mass of the same year, a number of believers once again wanted to see a movement of the cross. Toufar consulted with colleagues and explained in the sermon that the movement was due to divine work during Holy Mass and should not be interpreted as a bad omen. News of the apparition spread quickly. In January, some ecclesiastical officials visited the village church, including Ottavio de Liva , the ambassador of the Vatican in Prague. Soon it also caught the attention of the State Security .
Persecution and death
Toufar was arrested on January 28, 1950, taken to Valdice Prison and interrogated there using torture for a month. The aim of the interrogation was to get the pastor to admit that he had installed a mechanism with which he had produced the alleged miracle himself. As early as mid-1949, the ruling Communist Party had begun a series of anti-church measures. This included expropriations, restrictions on the freedom of the press and the arrest of church officials and members of the order. Toufar's confession was intended to serve as an exemplary condemnation in a first public show trial against a church dignitary.
On February 22nd, Josef Toufar confessed to manipulating the crucifix. He also signed another confession after sexually abusing children entrusted to him. Investigation of the case in the 1990s disproved this allegation. Experts from the Criminological Institute in Prague came to the conclusion in an opinion drawn up in 1994 that the texts of the confessions had been written by other people and that Toufar had merely signed. In addition, a reconstruction showed that the device described could not have been functional. How and whether the cross had moved has not yet been clarified.
On February 25, 1950, Josef Toufar was transferred to the state sanatorium in Prague in critical health, where he died immediately afterwards. On instructions from the State Security, the doctor entered a ruptured stomach ulcer as the cause of death on the death certificate . 18 years later, Dr. František Mauer: “I assisted Josef Toufar's operation at the time. We did all that human could do, but that person could not be saved. He was beaten to death in an unusually brutal manner. I would say - an outright murder. "
Josef Toufar was buried in a mass grave in Prague- Ďáblice . The relatives did not find out about his death until four years later.
consequences
Ladislav Mácha, the head of the investigation team that tortured Toufar to death, initially received only one party warning. In 1968 he was charged with an acquittal for failure to prove murder . The abuse of official authority was barred according to the laws of the time. In 1998 he was sentenced to five years imprisonment without parole for aggravated assault and abuse of authority; it was not possible to prove a direct connection between the torture and death, although this was very probable according to experts, nor was there any failure to provide assistance . In 1999 the appellate court changed the judgment to two years. Mácha did not serve the sentence for health reasons.
The State Security made a propaganda film about the miracle of Číhošť with the title Běda tomu, skrze něhož přichází pohoršení (based on a Bible verse: Woe to the person who seduces to apostasy . Matthew 18.7 EU ). Josef Toufar himself was supposed to appear in the film, but because he was in poor health at the first shooting date on February 23 and refused to cooperate and died before the next attempt, Karel Čížek, then known accuser of the political trials, took over his role . The film ran in theaters for a short time but was quickly canceled because it was obviously unreliable. Another propaganda work of a similar type was the book Čihošťský zázrak ( The Miracle of Číhošť ) by Vladimír Hodač, also published in 1950. The President and General Secretary of KSČ Klement Gottwald gave a lecture on the events in Číhošť at the party's plenary session on April 24-26. February 1950 and described it as a large-scale provocation of the Catholic Church. The planned show trial did not take place due to the death of Josef Toufar.
Josef Škvorecký dealt with the miracle of Číhošť and its aftermath in the novel Mirákl . In 2004 Jaroslav Polišenský shot the television film In nomine patris about Josef Toufar . In 2013 the documentary chamber opera Toufar by Aleš Březina had its world premiere in the Kolowrat Theater in Prague.
Web links
- Czech pages on the Josef Toufar case:
- Till Janzer: The persecution of the churches under communism . Radio Praha , November 3, 2007 (German)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Toufar, Josef |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Czech Catholic priest |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 14, 1902 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Arnolec |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 25, 1950 |
| Place of death | Prague |