Biskup Pavol Hnilica w oczach Państwowej Służby Bezpieczeństwa (Štátnej bezpečnosti)
Bishop Pavol Hnilica as Seen by Czechoslovakia’s State Security (Štátna bezpečnost)

Summary/Abstract: The activities of the secretly ordained Bishop Pavol Hnilica in the Slovak exile community in the free world for the benefit of persecuted Church behind the Iron Curtain, his significant position in relation to the Holy See under the pontificates of Paul VI and John Paul II, and, finally, his numerous contacts with Slovakia across the Iron Curtain were subject to scrutiny by Czechoslovak State Security (ŠtB) during the entire time when the Communist totalitarian regime was in power. ŠtB interest in theactivities of Bishop Hnilica was most intensive in the 1960s, especially in relation to the Second Vatican Council and his extraordinary relationship with Pope Paul VI. The State Security monitored his activities in detail from 1964 to 1974; there is a special monitoring file under the cover name Metod (in English: Methodius) which can be found in the Study Institute of the Archive of Security Services in Prague. This study aims to analyze, on the basis of available ŠtB files, the interest of the communist regime in Bishop Hnilica, who had been continuously living in exile from 1951 to 1989 and could not travel to Czechoslovakia; to map information the ŠtB gathered about him; and to use this example to document a radically hostile attitude of the regime towards Bishop Hnilica, Slovak Catholic exiles more generally, and, finally, towards the Roman Catholic Church.

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