VATICAN CITY — Czech Cardinal Dominik Duka, who had experienced oppression and imprisonment under his country’s former communist rulers, died Nov. 4 at the age of 82.
The former archbishop of Prague was born April 26, 1943, in Hradec Králové in what was then Czechoslovakia.
After high school, he worked in a factory and did his two years of mandatory military service before being admitted to Sts. Cyril and Methodius Theological Faculty in Litomerice in 1965. But three years later, he secretly entered the Dominican order, which was then illegal in Czechoslovakia.
Ordained to the priesthood in 1970, his government permit to work as a “spiritual administrator” was withdrawn in 1975, so he officially went to work in the Skoda car factory. Privately, he continued to study, to minister and to teach seminarians. In 1981, accused of “religious activities,” he was sentenced to 15 months in prison at Plzen-Bory, where he met Vaclav Havel, the dissident who would go on to lead the “Velvet Revolution” and become president.
After serving as provincial of the Dominicans and president of the Conference of Major Superiors of the Czech Republic, he was named bishop of Hradec Králové in 1998.
Pope Benedict XVI named him archbishop of Prague in 2010 and inducted him into the College of Cardinals two years later. He retired in 2022.
Cardinal Duka’s death leaves the College of Cardinals with 245 cardinals, 127 of whom are under the age of 80 and eligible to vote in a conclave.
