New crackdown on priests in Czechoslovakia

by Christopher Howse PROTESTS from a human rights group in Czechoslovakia against the arrest of a Franciscan priest have reached Rome in the last few days. The arrest is seen as the latest in a developing series of crackdowns by the Czechoslovakian government against the Church.
Fr Jan Barta, aged 59. was arrested by secret police agents in Liberec on November 18, according to the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted (Vons). He was charged with offences against State control of the Church.
The arrest was accompanied by searches of three houses in which Franciscans lived. and the confiscation of religious books and journals.
"Fr Barta's arrest is an open violation of the most basic human rights, as well as an arbitrary interference in the area of the Franciscan order's structure and life,the Vons communique said.
The priest was described as a sickly man who has suffered two heart attacks and was on disability pension as the result of a serious accident.
In 1952 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of treason. He was one of more than 3,000 priests in the country imprisoned in the early 50's in an all-out government effort to erase religion from Czechoslovakia. In 1966. as some church-state tensions were easing, he was released from prison.
Shortly after the "Prague Spring" of 1968, when many religious restrictions were dropped or eased. a new series of government measures restored many of the pre-1968 conditions.
Religious orders are among the most severely restricted. They cannot accept novices and their members cannot live a cornmunity life. Nuns are barred from their traditional teaching and social service apostolates.
The arrest follows raids on other priests forbidden by the government to exercise their ministry, according to a Canadian Slovak priest, Fr Vincent Danco, SJ.
Several priests, including two Slovak Jesuits, had their books, printed materials and manuscripts confiscated during the search of their apartments, Fr Danco said.
Jesuit Fr Gabriel Povala's flat in Zilina, Czechslovakia, was raided by police alleging the priest had illegally manufactured and sold wooden crosses. After a 10-hour search, the police removed no crosses but instead carried away Fr Povala's religious literature, private correspondence. manuscripts of his. religious and historic research, photographs and other materials. Danco stated.
He said that Fr Povala, although a specialist in history and archaeology, was able to find work in his field only as a labourer and digger at archaeological sites. He also has served as spiritual director of nuns allowed to continue nursing duties in a home for elderly women.
The police also forced their way into the homes of Fr Povala's relatives and took other materials stored by the priest there and searched the flat of Jesuit Fr Emil Krapka, who also has been forbidden to work as a priest and has served as organist at a former Jesuit church in Trnava, Czechoslovakia. Fr Krapka has extensively studied modern theology and the police confiscated his entire library.
Fr Danco expressed worries that the raids are steps in a wave of persecution of priests. He noted that a third Jesuit priest, Fr Oskar Formanek, was recently condemned in the town of Kosice. Czechoslovakia.