Word: beran
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...still arrested for anti-regime activities. But even here the church's prospects are improving. President Antonin Novotny is eager to touch up the Czech image in the West, and his government was clearly embarrassed when the Pope bestowed a red hat on Prague's Archbishop Josef Beran, now under house arrest. Czech exiles in Rome are preparing Beran's quarters for the consistory, and last week there were rumors that Casaroli had all but completed an agreement with the Reds. Beran would be called to the Curia; in return, the government might allow the Vatican...
...Pope did not forget the 65 million Catholics who live under Communism. Among those elevated to the purple were two prelates no longer in command of their sees: Ukrainian Metropolitan Josyf Slipyi, who came to Rome in 1963 after 18 years of Soviet imprisonment, and Czech Primate Josef Beran, who is still under virtual house arrest near Prague. One new East European cardinal who does govern his diocese is Yugoslavia's Primate, Archbishop Franjo Seper of Zagreb. His careful policy of accommodation with Tito may lead to a restoration of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Yugoslavia...
...release of the five Czech bishops was the first sign of a thaw between the church and a Stalinist regime that has been tougher on Catholicism longer than any other satellite government. But it had in short (5 ft. 2 in.), cheerful Josef Beran a tough opponent. Son of a schoolteacher, he served 15 years as a parish priest before becoming a teacher at Prague's Charles University in 1927. Beran was arrested by the Nazis in 1942, spent nearly three years at the notorious Dachau concentration camp. Pope Pius XII named him Archbishop of Prague...
Like Hungary's Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, Beran chose to battle his Communist overlords rather than negotiate with them after the Reds took over in 1948. He publicly protested the seizure of church property, forbade his clergy to take an oath of loyalty to the new regime, and eventually was put under house arrest. One day in 1949 Justice Minister Alexei Cepicka visited the archiepiscopal palace, hoping to bully him into submission. In answer, Beran went to a closet, picked up a bundle of ragged clothes that he had worn at Dachau, said "Let's go." He was hustled...
...reportedly in ill health, Beran is not expected to take possession of his see. His release along with his fellow bishops was obviously designed to provide a favorable image for a new government faced with public unrest over economic troubles. It also stirred hope again that Cardinal Mindszenty might soon leave his lonely exile in the U.S. legation in Budapest. For in Prague to hear the news of Beran's freedom was Hungary's Premier Janos Kadar, the Red satellite leader who seems most eager to reach some new form of concord with the church...