Cardinal Dominik Duka, ex-Prague Archbishop jailed under communism & key in church restitution, dies at 82. Led Havel funeral, conservative voice.
Newsroom (05/11/2025, Gaudium Press) Cardinal Dominik Duka, the former Archbishop of Prague who endured imprisonment under Czechoslovakia’s communist regime and later secured billions in compensation for church properties seized by the state, died early Tuesday. He was 82.
The Prague Archdiocese announced his death in a statement, saying he passed away at a hospital in the capital. No cause was disclosed.
Born Jaroslav Václav Duka on April 26, 1943, in Hradec Králové, he entered a clandestine religious life after the 1948 communist coup unleashed sweeping persecution of the Catholic Church. Properties were confiscated, priests imprisoned or executed, and surviving clergy operated under secret police surveillance.
Duka joined the Dominican Order in secret in 1968, taking the religious name Dominik. Ordained in 1970, he was stripped of his priestly faculties in 1975 yet persisted in underground ministry. In 1981, authorities sentenced him to 15 months in Plzeň’s Bory prison, where he shared a cell with dissident playwright Václav Havel—later the architect of the 1989 Velvet Revolution and Czechoslovakia’s first post-communist president.
Duka presided over Havel’s funeral Mass at St. Vitus Cathedral in December 2011. The previous year, he resolved a decades-long dispute by regaining state recognition of church ownership over the cathedral, the Czech Republic’s largest.
Elevated to Prague archbishop in 2010 and created cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012, Duka served until his 2022 retirement. His tenure coincided with landmark 2013 legislation returning confiscated religious properties and committing the government to $3 billion in compensation to churches over 30 years—an effort to close a dark chapter in the nation’s history.
A staunch conservative, Duka faced criticism for allegedly minimizing clerical abuse scandals. In 2018, the Constitutional Court and lower tribunals rejected his legal challenge against two theater festival productions accused of mocking Catholicism.
Prime Minister Petr Fiala praised Duka’s “bravery and activities during the time of totalitarianism” and his “important role in the renewal of the church in a democratic society.” The Czech Republic remains one of Europe’s most secular nations.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Crux Now
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