„Dávám se cele k disposici k pastoraci v pohraničí.“ Snahy o poválečnou obnovu a personální situace litoměřické diecéze po druhé světové válce
“I make myself entirely available to minister in the borderlands.” Efforts at post-war renewal and the personnel situation in the Litoměřice dioceses after WWII

Summary/Abstract: This paper reveals the situation in the Roman Catholic Church in the Czechoslovak Republic after 1945, specifically the conditions for pastoral work in the Litoměřice dioceses. Northern Bohemia was one of the regions most impacted by the transfer of the population following the end of WWII. The church structure on the territory of the Litoměřice bishopric also underwent fundamental change when bishops of German nationality were forced to step down; one canon of Czech origin represented the chapter, which possessed a cathedral, while hundreds of German priests left their parishes and departed across the Czechoslovak border. Representatives of the Litoměřice dioceses looked into various ways of reviving the parish network in places from which the German population had been expelled and to which returnees and new inhabitants from the Bohemian interior were arriving. Alongside a long-term strategy of supporting vocations and the energetic accession of Štěpán Trochta to the position of bishop of the dioceses, another strategy was to call on Czech priests from other dioceses to move to the borderlands. The paper explores the process of incardination of priests into the Litoměřice dioceses, their motivations in taking on the tough conditions of the border area and the moral character of post-war Czech society and the Roman Catholic Church.

• Details
• Contents