Praise for cardinal jailed under communism

A Jesuit cardinal who became the world’s youngest bishop, aged just 27, when he was secretly consecrated under communist rule, has died in his native Slovakia, writes Jonathan Luxmoore. “In his long service to the Church, this devout and rare shepherd showed himself to be an unfaltering witness to the Gospel and a courageous champion of the Christian faith,” the Pope said on Monday after the death of 91-year-old Cardinal Ján Chryzostom Korec.

Born at Bosana, Korec joined the outlawed Jesuit order shortly after the 1948 communist coup in then Czechoslovakia, and was secretly consecrated in August 1951. Having ministered underground, he was arrested in March 1960 and sentenced to 12 years’ jail and hard labour for treason and “cooperation with the imperialist Vatican”.

Although freed during the 1968 Prague Spring, he was later again barred from pastoral work, but secretly ordained 120 clergy.