"If I was to confess, the very first time I [wore] it publicly was at the canonization of Agnes of Bohemia in Rome. At that time, we went with the sisters to the canonization and they allowed us, who had been secretly admitted, to dress in religious habit. So we went there in religious habit, and we somehow felt that the breakthrough would come and that it would be soon. Then we came back, and because I continued to go to work at Kociánka, it wasn't really official yet. And in that year ’90, I gave my notice, saying that I was going to Velehrad. And at that time I told them that I was a nun."
"In 1983, when I was already in Brno, we lived in Zábrdovice on Vaníčkova Street. And at that time they summoned all those who had permanent residence in Brno, and they knew about us. There were some sisters who had entered before the year 1950 and wore civilian clothes, because some of them had taken off [their religious habit] to be able to work for us, so they wore civilian clothes and worked in the hospital. We had three communities in Brno at that time. So the ones [of us] that had permanent residence in Brno were summoned on one day for questioning. And they wanted to know about the forbidden activities of the congregation, because they knew that I had worked before in Stojanov, I had socialized with the sisters, so about the forbidden activities, in terms of admitting adolescents [to novitiate] and so on. At that time I didn't deny the fact that I was in touch with the nuns. I said that I had worked there for six years, I had acquaintances, friends there and so on. I keep going to Velehrad because I have some bonds there. And of course I claimed that none of us were in the order. But they named them all for us, they named them all - they knew about us, about everyone."
"I personally felt it from the second class. Back then, religion was taught from second to seventh year. My oldest brothers started going to school in Rájec, when we moved [to Blansko] my sister went to first class and I went a year after her. And at that time there were four primary schools in Blansko, and the headmasters tried to have as few children in religious education as possible. So it was even so that from all four schools there was only one class where there were children from second to seventh year. And because no school wanted to be the bad school where religion was taught, so we went and studied every week in a different school - Lenin's, Engels', Marx's, Dvorská, and so we took turns. Dvorská was renamed Julius Fučík´s. So it was quite difficult. Not only did both parents have to sign the application form, one of the parents had to take it to the headmaster's office, where the headmaster gave them a lecture about how inappropriately they behaved towards their children and that they would stop them from getting further education and so on. But even the teachers had to go to see families and persuade them not to send the children to religious education. And they even threatened my mother that they would take us, children, and put us in an orphanage because she was spoiling our education. Mum said that at the time she had stood up to them, asking if they didn't have enough children to take care of? And that she would raise her children [herself]. It wasn't until she was very old that she told me how many times she had worried if we would come home from school okay."
Anežka Němcová, by religious name Sister Kateřina, was born on 12 July 1957 in Okrouhlá near Boskovice to Marie and Oldřich Němec. Her maternal grandfather Josef Jakubů fought in the World War I on the Eastern Front. During the World War II he served as mayor of Okrouhlá. After 1948 he was declared a kulak and the family lost its farm. Anežka was led to faith from a young age and dedicated her whole life to God. After graduating from a secondary medical school in Brno, she entered the Institute of Youth Social Welfare Stojanov in Velehrad, where sisters from the Congregation of the Sisters of Sts. Cyril and Methodius worked. In 1976, Anežka secretly entered the novitiate and a year later took her first vows. In the 1980s, she worked at the Kociánka Centre in Brno. In 1985, she participated in a pilgrimage to Velehrad, and four years later, she took part in the canonization of Agnes of Bohemia in the Vatican. From 1991 to 1996 she was a student of religious studies at the Gregorian University Regina Mundi in Rome. From 1999 she served as Superior General of the Congregation of the Sisters of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. In 2022, she was still living in Velehrad, where she ran a charity home for nuns.
