Ludmila Javorová

* 1932

  • "I remember very well Father Pokorny, he was some kind of musicologist or critic, that he would put his biretta away in my parents' bedroom, where they usually sat at the table, and as my mother was serving them, I kept pulling my mother's skirt, that I wanted to touch it. Mother didn't react much to this, but Mr Pokorny stood up and said, 'But the girls mustn't touch that!' So I remained a little stunned, but then I went very carefully and touched it nicely. Just with my little finger. How old I might have been, I don't know. I was a little kid. About three or four, I think."

  • "He came to me in the kitchen and showed me a paper. 'Look, I have a paper here, they were with you today, they want you to sign it, that they were here, and if they could come again.' Felix, I am not going to sign that. I'll sign that they were here, because I agreed to it, but I'm not going to sign so they can come back next time.' If you could have seen how he begged me. Of course, we weren't allowed to talk, so he wrote on the table. I immediately threw it away and then we burned it in the toilet. Friends, this is something so cruel you can't imagine. You perceive the depth of the fear and on the other hand you also perceive that when they come here you will also catch something. Because the first time the door was open. Then they closed it. Halfway through, I think I knew, and then they came to close it. I was like, 'Felix, don't ask me to sign it, I'm not going to sign it.' He was begging me like that. 'I'm not going to go in there.' I signed it, but I didn't sign any cooperation, and the Vorech, what's his name, the guy who did the lists, he put me on the list that I was cooperating with them. What was his name? - Cibulka. He didn't know the circumstances at all. He didn't know his head or his heels. I figured if I blurred it out, I'd have to admit Felix's fear, and I didn't want to. But what am I going to proudly admit that they were here and I told them, 'Gentlemen, I'm not letting you in!'"

  • "When we arrived at the rectory in Koberice, there was a big rectory, everybody, there were about 50 people there. Can you imagine that? How difficult it was to ensure the safety of everyone? So a plan was drawn up, for everyone where to stand with the car, in which village at which place, when they would arrive there. So some of them had to be there in the morning, some in the afternoon, so the 50 people were parked around Kobeřice and they were going there individually. And when we were the last ones to arrive, at night, I had severe angina then. At night we arrived, so from the management group, the students who were supplied by Short stood in front of Felix in the corridor and said, 'Stop, the council is not taking place'. It's as if you've put a dagger in my heart. And Felix said, with perfect calmness, 'But that's what I'm here for, whether it's taking place or not. You all agreed, you all swore that it should take place, nobody objected, so now you can't come up with the idea that it's not going to take place when the people came here.' Whether they were for it or against it. Nobody influenced anybody. The messengers didn't know anything. And they, in turn, checked or crossed out the slip and put the slip in an envelope and took it away. I had it in a pile on my desk, this here. And when we arrived, the council wasn't held, so Felix said, 'No, we're not going to go among them, we're going to go here to the office.' And Felix said, 'Why isn't it held?' - 'Because there's no suitable woman at the present time to do this, and knowing you, you're going to do it.'"

  • "If I were standing at the altar, no one would stop me. No one would stop me. I guarantee you that. Because I would talk to those people. Now is the moment when you place your boulders here on my paten of love, Christ will be transformed, the substance, and he will transform your hardships. We shall never see it with our eyes, but it is in eternity."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Brno, 08.10.2014

    (audio)
    délka: 02:40:43
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
  • 2

    Brno, 06.12.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:57:39
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - JMK REG ED
  • 3

    Brno, 04.08.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 02:11:32
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - JMK REG ED
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I felt it was the way

Ludmila Javorová
Ludmila Javorová
zdroj: soutěž

The story of Ludmila Javorová can be, perhaps a little hyperbolically, described as one of the thirteenth chambers of the modern history of the Roman Catholic Church. She was born on 31 January 1932. She spent her childhood and the war together with her large family in Chrlice near Brno. From 1964 she became a close collaborator of the later secretly consecrated Bishop Felix Maria Davídek. She assisted him in the creation of the so-called hidden church Koinótés (a community of Roman Catholic Christians in strict concealement), whose existence was a reaction to the communist regime‘s devastating crackdown on churches. Despite the opposition of some members of this group, David ordained Ludmila a deacon in late 1970 and then a priest. Her task was to minister primarily in women‘s prisons, where women were „left out“ without an exclusively male priestly ministry, often losing their faith and in need of spiritual accompaniment. She was to do so if she was arrested, as was rightly expected at the time. She pursued her priestly work despite the disapproval of some members of the hidden church. In 1983, she appealed to Pope John Paul II about her case through Cardinal František Tomášek, but did not receive a reply. In 1996 she was officially told that she was forbidden to exercise her priestly ministry because her ordination was invalid according to canon (Church) law. Even though Ludmila could never exercise her priestly vocation publicly, she considered it her life‘s mission. After the Revolution, she found a career as a religious teacher. However, she did not stop talking about her fate - albeit with fear in her voice. She hoped that after the Velvet Revolution Felix Maria Davídek would be cleared, which has not happened yet. But she still did not stop believing that the time would come when women would be given more space in the Roman Catholic Church.