‘Miracle priest’ is reburied 65 years after brutal interrogation

A Czech priest who was beaten to death by Communist secret police after being accused of faking a miracle at his church has been reburied at his former parish in Moravia, writes Jonathan Luxmoore. “This priest was buried like an animal,” said Cardinal Dominik Duka, the ­bishops’ conference president.

The cardinal was preaching at the reburial of Fr Josef Toufar (1902-50) before the altar of his church at Cíhoste, near the city of Hradec Králové, 65 years after he was dumped in an unmarked grave in Prague’s Dáblice cemetery. The priest was denounced as a fraudster in  Czechoslovakia’s Communist-controlled media when a tabernacle cross began to move inexplicably while he was preaching in December 1949. After a six-hour beating in his interrogation, Fr Toufar signed a confession that he had rigged the alleged miracle, and died two months later. A beatification process for the priest, whose remains were identified by DNA tests, was launched in 2012.