“I was taking one hundred young people to the rectory to sleep over there. And one hundred of them stayed there. We walked hand in hand as it was pitch dark, the blackest night. We came to the road and scattered into groups of 25 people each. There was a gap between every two groups and we walked in silence down the road to the rectory. It was not possible to turn on the light so everybody had to find his place to sleep in the dark. On the way, it happened that somebody would spot the light of a torch at us and when he saw this mass procession of people walking through the night, he put out the light again and disappeared in the dark. The next day, at ten to ten, the church was empty and at ten o’clock, it was crammed with youngsters.”
“In 1990, three men in long coats from Ústí nad Labem paid me a visit and told me: ‘We’re coming to remove the bug in your flat. You were one of the most listened to persons in the whole region of Ústí. Then I saw how it worked. The microphone was planted in the ceiling of the room where we would convene. It was wired to the telephone. In this way, we had been under surveillance for the whole time. Thus it was absolutely right that we had the motto: ‘we want to praise God here and we will not tell any political jokes here’.”
“The secretary of our church was not trying to do us harm, she actually tried to warn us from time to time. A certain Major Hraš would come to check on us. They said that he was a member of the criminal investigation department of the police and not of the secret police. I don’t know who he was. Anyway, he was coming regularly to inspect our rectory. We’d get into serious trouble if he came just at the very moment when the rectory was crowded with youngsters. Under Communism, this would not be tolerated. So she gave me a call and told me that the inspection by Major Hraš was up in two days. She and Major Hraš would come to check the rectory. So she urged me to be at home and to have the rectory in ‘good order’. Thus I made sure that when they came on Thursday, there was no one there at the rectory, only my mother and I. I called my mom to come from eastern Bohemia to the parish and to cook for me. So when Major Hraš saw just the two of us there, he did a quick search and then they were off again.”
Miroslav Šimáček was born on May 10, 1951, in Ústí nad Orlicí. His father was a doctor and his mother was a nurse. Miroslav Šimáček attended grammar school and began his theology studies in Litoměřice in 1969. In the years 1971 – 1973, he completed his military service and became a member of the Fokoláre movement. In 1976, he became a vicar in Litoměřice. A year later, he was ordained a parish vicar in Chomutov. For his activities, he was interrogated by the secret police. As he did not accept its offer of cooperation, he was transferred to a far-off parish called Příchovice. During his term there, the rectory became the informal meeting place for the youth from all over Czechoslovakia. After the Velvet Revolution, Miroslav was appointed the first director of the Youth Section of the Czech Bishop Conference. Since July 1, 2002, he has been the arch dean in Ústí nad Labem and the “excurrendo” administrator of the parishes of Čermná, Chlumec, Krásný Les, Libouchec, Nakléřov, Petrovice, Skorotice, Tisá, Velké Chvojno and Žežice. He lives in Ústí nad Labem.
