The Church and Revolution
- Where: St. Ursula’s church, Národní třída 8, Prague 1
- When: November 17, 2014, 17:00 – 18:00
The debate about the role of church in the events of November 1989. From at least the second half of the 1980s there was a visible coming together of official and unofficial church structures, which became abundantly clear during the Velehrad pilgrimage of 1985, and prefigured and confirmed cooperation between the church and civic dissidents.
The forum of the church provided one of the few public and collective opportunities to demonstrate opposition to the leaders of the governing regime. One example was preparations for the beatification of Agnes of Bohemia, which took place at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome on 12 November 1989. The departure of over 10,000 pilgrims, who crossed the Iron Curtain to witness for themselves the canonisation ceremony, confirmed that the shaky foundations of communism were also beginning to fall apart in Czechoslovakia.
Confirmed participants: kardinál Miloslav Vlk and Jaroslav Šebek. Chaired by Marek Orko Vácha.
Photo (c) Pavel Hroch
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- The Church and Revolution November 19, 2014