More than six decades after Archbishop Josef Karel Matocha died under communist internment, a Czech court has formally recognized his imprisonment as unlawful.
The district court in Olomouc, Czech Republic, has rehabilitated Josef Karel Matocha, the city’s former archbishop, recognizing his internment under the communist regime as unlawful more than six decades after his death.
The court’s decision, based on the Judicial Rehabilitation Act, confirms that the prelate was a victim of unlawful deprivation of liberty in the 1950s by the communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia. He was not formally convicted, yet he was forced to remain in the archbishop’s palace under surveillance by the State Security, and this was recognized as imprisonment.
The current archbishop of Olomouc, Josef Nuzík, said he is “very happy that after so many years we have managed to complete this procedural step and achieve justice” in civil law as well.
Matocha is “constantly present in our palace and in the hearts of believers,” and guests “are often moved when they realize that these beautiful spaces were his prison,” said Nuzík, who is also president of the Czech Bishops’ Conference.
The rehabilitation is an important sign “also for the entire society,” he
