“I was in the second year of my grammar school studies. I remember that we went on a strike in December 1968. Everything was collapsing after August 1968 and we were on a strike in protest against it. It was before the self-immolation of Jan Palach. As students we wanted that the occupation would not affect the changes (brought about by the Prague Spring) Karel Kryl came to visit us. We were wondering: ‘Hey, who is it?’ ‘You don’t know who he is?! It’s Karel Kryl!’ He sang for all of us, it was nice.”
“I went to see the dean, associate professor Čermák. I told him that my dad had died and that I wanted to go to the funeral (to Paris – ed.’s note). He looked at me: ‘And don’t you plan on staying there?’ I replied: ‘I promise you. I will not stay there.’ ‘I believe your promise.’ He then signed the recommendation for me. Surprisingly, I was really allowed to travel abroad. As an influential personality, dad had many good friends, who were persuading me after the funeral: ‘Stay here, we will take care of you, you will finish your studies here. Your dad was a great scientist and we respect him greatly and we want to do something for him; we can at least take care of his son.’ There are two things worth mentioning: At first, I told them that all I knew was what I had learnt here (in Czechoslovakia – ed.’s note) and that I had no reason to pass it on to the French for free. And second, I had given my promise to the dean that I would return, and I could not break that promise.”
“In November 1989 (I can’t remember whether it was on the 18th or 20th) we received an order from Dominik (Duka – ed.’s note), who at that time was a secretly appointed provincial superior. He told us: ‘Now it is either – or. Get out of illegality and serve. Go to the altars as priests. They will either imprison us or call for us. We cannot have them chose for us, we need to take the risk.’ This was something that I liked a lot. The communists were weak at that moment, and it was not possible at that time that they would start imprisoning us or holding court trials with us: they had many other enemies. But on the other hand, we were not able to pretend that nothing was happening while it would be apparent that we would be publicly disobeying the regulations for the state administration of churches; that would be strange, too. It was a provocation: either – or, because they would not imprison us immediately. It also required some courage from the officially approved priest, because he immediately allowed me to celebrate the mass together with him. They could have reprimanded him: ‘You should not have let him to the altar.’ This way we became public. I don’t know about the other orders, but all the Dominicans who had been ordained secretly came to the altars with stoles around their necks.”
Ondřej Soudský was born July 18, 1952 in Prague. His parents Eva and Bohumil Soudský worked as archaeologists in the Archaeology Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. From 1970 his father was employed as a lecturer at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he unexpectedly died in 1976. Ondřej graduated from the Academic Grammar School in Prague and from the University of Economics, majoring in statistics. He worked as a statistician in the Central Computing Facility of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. While a university student, he converted to Christianity and he got acquainted with members of the Dominican Order which he eventually decided to join. Catholic orders were banned in Czechoslovakia since the 1950s, and they became officially restored only after 1989. Activities of the members of the Order were done illegally. Just like others, Ondřej Soudský went through preparatory training which was conducted in private apartments and parsonages where members of the Dominican Order lived undercover. Upon joining the Order he accepted the name Vojtěch. The bishop of Erfurt Hans-Reinhard Koch secretly ordained him a priest in 1987 in Leipzig. Not even Ondřej‘s mother knew about his ordination. He publicly appeared only in November 1989. In 1991-2000 he was the administrator of the parish of the Sts Philip and Jacob church in Prague-Zlíchov. In 2000 his superiors transferred him from the Prague monastery to Pilsen where he became a priest for the Virgin Mary of the Rosary parish. The bishop František Radkovský appointed him a bishopric vicar for schools and education in the Pilsen diocese.
Wedding of his sister Eliška (sister, brother-in-law, mother; on the right Zbyněk Hloch, Vojtěch Budinský-Krička; Ondřej with his grandmother in the back)
Wedding of his sister Eliška (sister, brother-in-law, mother; on the right Zbyněk Hloch, Vojtěch Budinský-Krička; Ondřej with his grandmother in the back)
