Charles was born the son of the second son of the Emperor’s brother and so the possibility of him ever ascending to the Austro-Hungarian throne seemed distant, perhaps even remote. When the great Pope St. Pius X received the young Charles, however, he said:

I bless Archduke Charles, who will be the future Emperor of Austria and will help lead his countries and peoples to great honor and many blessings–but this will not become obvious until after his death.

One saint prophesying the future of another.

A particularly appropriate way of praying for the holy emperor’s intercession would be to say the novena composed by the Emperor Charles Prayer League for Peace Among the Nations (or Kaiser Karl Gebetsliga für den Völkerfrieden), which can be found here.

Pilgrims can also venerate his relics or pray at shrines dedicated to Charles in Australia, the Philippines, Austria, Belgium, Bohemia, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Lebanon, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Brazil, Chile, and of course on the Portuguese island of Madeira where he died and is entombed.

Index: Charles of Austria

In October of last year, a relic ex ossibus of Blessed Charles I was formally received at the Basilica Church of Our Lady of Mercy & St. Michael Archangel in Barcelona, the capital city of the Spanish principality of Catalonia. The bone fragment is the first relic of the last Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, and King of Bohemia to be publicly venerated in the Kingdom of Spain. It was requested by His Grace the Bishop of Solsona, Don Jaume Traserra y Cunillera, at the request of the Catalonian Delegation of the Constantinian Order. The relic has been enshrined in the chapel of St. Michael the Archangel, alongside a portrait of the Emperor.

A grandson of Blessed Charles, HIRH the Archduke Simeon of Austria, attended (with his wife) as the representative of HRH the Infante Don Carlos, Duke of Calabria, the Grand Master of the Constantinian Order and head of the Royal House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. Also in attendance were Lt. Gen. Don Fernando Torres Gonzalez (Army Inspector General), General Mainar Don Gustavo Gutierrez (Chief of the 3rd Sub-inspection Pyrenees and Military Commander General of Barcelona and Tarragona), as well as representatives of the Order of Malta, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, various guilds and corps of Spanish nobility, and lay fraternities.

After the passing of the Hapsburg empire, which had been so protective of its Jewish subjects (especially compared to the regimes which succeeded it), numerous prominent Jews were received into the Catholic faith, perhaps having come to a full appreciation of precisely what they had lost. The subject of “Literary Jewish Converts to Christianity in Interwar Hungary” is worthy of further investigation (some graduate student should write a dissertation on just such a matter). I am no longer surprised when, in my researches, I come across yet another fascinating Hungarian Jew — be he a writer, playwright, poet, or patron — and discover, usually buried in some footnote, that he died a good Catholic.

It was announced recently that Mgr. Yves Le Saux, Bishop of Le Mans in the traditional province of Maine (Pays de la Loire), France has opened the cause for the beatification of Zita of Bourbon-Parma, the long-lived wife of Blessed Emperor Charles of Austria. Charles, the last (to date) Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, and King of Bohemia (&c.), died in exile in Madiera in 1922, aged just thirty-four years. Zita Maria delle Grazie Adelgonda Micaela Raffaela Gabriella Giuseppina Antonia Luisa Agnese de Bourbon-Parma, meanwhile, was born in Tuscany in 1892 and lived a long life, giving up the ghost in March 1989, and interred in the Capuchin vault in Vienna following a funeral of imperial dignity.

“The process was opened in Le Mans,” Gregor Kollmorgen of TNLM reports, “and not in the Swiss diocese of Chur, where the Empress died twenty years ago in 1989 in Zizers, with the consent of Msgr. Huonder, the Bishop of Chur, and the permission of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, because within the diocese of Le Mans is situated the Abbey of Solesmes, well known to NLM readers for its leading rôle in the early liturgical movement in the nineteenth century, especially regarding Gregorian chant, and which was the spiritual center of the Servant of God Zita, her home among her many exiles.”

Zita’s relationship with Solesmes dates back to 1909 when she first visited its sister-abbey of St. Cecilia on the Isle of Wight in England. She became an oblate of the Abbey of Solesmes itself in 1926. Her daily life after the exile & death of her saintly husband included the Rosary, hearing multiple daily masses, and praying part of the Divine Office.

Zita was the daughter of the deposed Duke of Parma, Robert I, during his second marriage to Maria Antonia of Portugal. The Duke’s first wife, Maria Pia of the Two Sicilies, died in 1882, and Zita was the seventeenths of the Duke’s twenty-four children by his two wives. Three of Zita’s sisters became nuns, a vocation which she explored, but in 1909 she became reacquainted with her childhood friend Archduke Charles of Austria. In June 1911, they were engaged and then married at the castle of Schwarzau that October.

After the horrendous Sarajevo Assassination of 1914, Charles became heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and the empire was thrown into the catastrophic First World War. When the Emperor Franz Joseph died in November 1916, Charles succeeded to the imperial throne. Zita accompanied their son & heir Otto to the coronation of her husband in Budapest.

First as Archduchess and then as Empress, Zita proved a suitable match for Charles, happy to don the national costume of the many nations over which the Hapsburg empire spread its vast and benevolent dominion when the occasion arose.

In November 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, and the Hapsburgs were forced to flee Austria in the March of the following year. The family were first exiled to Switzerland, but after two nearly successful attempts to regain his Hungarian throne, the Swiss revoked his residency privilege and the allied powers transferred him to the Portuguese island of Madeira, where he died in 1922. Zita and the children moved to Spain shortly after the death of the Emperor, and then to Belgium in 1929 as Crown Prince Otto prepared to begin his studies at Leuven, the oldest remaining Catholic university in the world. Friendly overtures by the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuß and, following his murder by Nazis, Chancellor Schuschnigg came to nought when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938.

As Catholics, the Hapsburgs were opposed to everything Hitler stood for, and as former monarchs Hitler considered them potential rivals. When he invaded Belgium in 1940, Zita took the family through France and Spain to Portugal, where the United States government granted them entry visas. After sailing into New York, they spent varying periods of time around the metropolitan region. As the children’s English was paltry at best, they (being Francophones) eventually made their way to Quebec. In the province’s capital, arguably the most European of North America’s cities, they were so poor that the children resorted to collection dandelions from the public parks to boil into an almost tasteless soup. (I reflected up this point when I, on my visit to the grave of the holy Gen. Georges Vanier in that city, I came across the frozen remnants of a dandelion in the snow).

In 1952, however, the Empress Zita returned to Europe, first to Luxembourg before finally making her final home in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. In 1989, at ninety-six years of age, the Empress Zita died. The Austrian Republic allowed her funeral to be held in Vienna, and the former imperial capital witnessed the finest Hapsburg spectacle since the funeral of the Emperor Franz Joseph in 1916.

In many ways Zita’s cause is not a surprise. When Charles of Austria was beatified, October 21 — not his death day but the anniversary of his marriage to Zita (photo above) — was chosen as his feast day, which suggested the possibility that this married couple might some day be jointly praised on the altars of Christendom. The following is the official prayer to invoke the intercession of Empress Zita:

Any graces received through the intercession of the Servant of God, Empress Zita — especially those which are possibly miraculous — should contact:

More: Charles of Austria

Prague’s university, the Universitas Carolina, was founded in 1347 and this is the first university of the Germans — a nation with a long (if varied) intellectual tradition. In a fashion similar to the medieval university of Paris, the Charles University was divided into “nations”: the Bavarians, the Bohemians, the Poles, and the Saxons. The splendid cosmopolitanism of Christendom was threatened by the challenge of nationalism as early as the 1400s, when the Decree of Kuttenberg stoked ethnic tensions by granting the masters of the Bohemian “nation” at the University three votes to the one vote to be shared amongst the Bavarians, Poles, and Saxons. All of this was provoked by various political power plays during the Western Schism, and the Decree resulted in an exodus of German professors and students to other universities, and indeed inspired the foundation of the university at Leipzig. More lamentable was the election, soon after, of the heretic Jan Hus as rector of the Bohemian-dominated university. No good came from this, but after the fall of the Hussites, order was restored.

In the following centuries the university underwent numerous changes. A new academy, the Clementinum, was founded in 1562. The Jesuits were given control in 1622, and twenty years later Ferdinand III merged the two centers of learning to form the Charles-Ferdinand University. In 1784, German replaced Latin as the language of instruction, and in 1791 Leopold II established a chair of Czech language and literature. By the 1860s, the royal city of Prague no longer had a German-speaking majority, and by then Czech had joined German as a medium of learning. Lamentably, the government decided to split Prague’s university in two on lingual lines: the Royal & Imperial German Charles-Ferdinand University, and the Royal & Imperial Czech Charles-Ferdinand University.

The German university experienced a brief heyday just before the First World War, but America’s entry into the conflict spelt doom not only for Catholic Europe as a whole, but specifically for any peoples who found themselves suddenly a member of an “ethnic minority”, no matter if they had dwelled there for centuries. The new Czechoslovak republic passed laws favouring the Czech University over the German University. With just over 50,000 Germans living in Prague after the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the German University considered moving to Reichenberg (Cz., Liberec) in northern Bohemia, the central city to Czechoslovakia’s German population of some millions, but the academic leadership demurred.

After the 1939 invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Czech University was closed by the Nazis, who purported the close was temporary, but it remained shut until after the Soviet conquest of Prague in May 1945. The new Soviet-backed Czechoslovak authorities began the immediate ethnic cleansing of all Germans from their territory, irrespective of whether they had actively abetted the Nazis, resisted them, or remained inactive. The German University collapsed, but its remnants fled to Munich, where the Collegium Carolina continues today as a German-language institute for higher studies in Bohemian & Czech culture.

While the Czech University reopened — called simply the Univerzita Karlova v Praze, or Charles University of Prague — its freedom was short-lived as the Communists began their takeover of the Czechoslovak government and society. With the relaxation of restrictions during the 1980s, faculty and students began to voice their dissent from the socialist system, and many participated in the Velvet Revolution that ended political communism in Czechoslovakia. Today, the Charles University is widely recognised as the preeminent academic institution of the Czech Republic.

Prague is traditionally known as “Praga Caput Regni” — the capital of the realm, or indeed the head of the Bohemian body. Changing times and a different form of government mean that the arms of this ancient city now bear the motto “Praga Caput Rei Publicae” instead. The photographer Libor Sváček was born in the be-castled city of Krummau, and has a splendid book of photographs of that town, but here are a number of his photographs of Prague, which splendidly exhibit the Old Town at its most beautiful.

The Old Town Square is at the very center of Prague. Lamentably, the old Town Hall was not rebuilt after its wartime destruction in 1945. Its clock tower, with one of the most famous astronomical clocks in the world, remains, but the rest of the site is now occupied by a green park.

Pražský hrad — the Prague Castle. “A spell hangs in the air of this citadel,” Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote in A Time of Gifts, “and I was under its thrall long before I could pronounce its name.” The hrad has been the center of authority for centuries, housing the Přemyslid, Luxemburg, and Hapsburg dynasties, the Czechoslovak presidents, the Nazi Reichsprotektor, and the presidents of the Czech Republic.

In the center of the Castle district, or Hradčany, is the Cathedral of St. Vitus, St. Wenceslas, and St. Adalbert (more commonly known just as St. Vitus Cathedral). The tomb of St. Wenceslas is here, as is the Crown Chamber holding the Bohemian Crown Jewels.

Work on the cathedral began in 1344, but came to a halt in the 1420s during the Hussite Wars. In 1844, an earnest canon of the cathedral began to organise and campaign for the cathedral’s completion, and work on the western half of the cathedral began in 1861. The finishing touches were completed in time for the St. Wenceslas jubilee in 1929.

The Archbishop’s Palace has been home to the Primate of Bohemia since 1562. It was lavishly redecorated in Baroque and Rococo styles towards the end of the seventeenth century.

The Schwarzenberg Palace was actually built for the Lobkowicz family from 1546-1567, but came into the possesion of the Schwarzenbergs by marriage in 1719. When the Nazis took Prague, Adolf von Schwarzenberg, no friend to Hitler, was head of the dynasty. As the Times of London reported some years ago, “During Hitler’s victory celebrations in Vienna in 1938, he raised a black flag over his palace in Prague, and when the Nazis banned Jews from gardens and parks he opened the garden of his Viennese palace to the public, hanging a sign saying ‘Jews welcome’ on the gate.” Not surprisingly, the Nazis confiscated all of his property.

After the war, the Czechoslovak government returned all properties expropriated by the Nazis, except those of Prince Adolf, passing the Lex Schwarzenberg specifically to accomplish this. Despite the fall of the Iron Curtain and the advent of democracy in the Czech Republic, the new government refuses to return the Schwarzenberg properties to their rightful owners. Adolf’s sole heir, Alzbeta von Pezold, has been in court trying to get the properties returned. “It took the Schwarzenberg family several hundred years to put this estate together,” her husband, Dr. Rudiger von Pezold, told the Times, “and it may take thirty years to get it back.”

The churches of St. František (left) and St. Salvator (right) sit right across a little square from each other. St. Salvator was built by the Jesuits in the late seventeenth century, while the Order of the Knights of the Cross with a Red Star constructed the Church of St. St. František (or Francis).

From the Old Castle Steps you can see the dome of St. Nicholas.

The Church, not to be confused with St. Nicholas at Old Town Square, is at the heart of the Malá Strana, or Lesser Quarter, just inside the quarter’s medieval gateway.

The church is the masterpiece of the Dientzenhofers, father Christoph and son Kilian Ignaz. (Confusingly, they also worked on the other St. Nicholas, at Old Town Square).

The Čertovka, an artificial channel, separates the Lesser Quarter from the artificial river-island of Kampa.

The Charles Bridge was begun by King Charles IV in 1357, connecting the Lesser Quarter to the Old Town across the Moldau. A number of statues were added to the bridge during the Baroque era.

St. George’s Basilica is the oldest church in the Castle District. Founded in 920, rebuilt in 1142, and given a Baroque façade in the 1690s. The basilica now acts as a concert hall, and the neighbouring convent houses the National Gallery’s collection of nineteenth-century Bohemian art.

The National Theatre, one of the grandest public buildings of the Hapsburg empire, is Prague’s home of opera, drama, and ballet. It was opened in 1881 in the presence of the ill-fated Crown Prince Rudolf.

BY NOW THE denizens of this little corner of the web are surely aware of Krummau, the splendid castle and town that towers above the banks of the Moldau river in Bohemia. I was never particularly interested in Bohemia until Fr. Emerson came up to St Andrews and gave a talk on the Hapsburgs. Unfortunately, this was before they began to record the talks (and offer them online) as it was an excellent brief lecture that I’d love to revisit. Now Bohemia is one of my passions, in addition to an increasingly large burden of passions (Scotland, New York, Argentina, the Netherlands, South Africa, France, Hungary, Transylvania, Canada, Scandinavia, … ). The architecture is superb and varied, and of course the Duke of Krummau is none other than a certain Prague pol. The complex is no longer in the Schwarzenberg family, but is instead now the State Castle of Český Krumlov.

The Chapel of Saint George in the Castle once contained the skull and bones of Pope St. Callixtus I. The remains were obtained by the Emperor Charles IV, who gave them to the Rosenberg family who built the castle, from whom they (and the castle itself) passed to the Schwarzenbergs, only to be lost after 1614. Nonetheless, the skull of an unknown North African martyr came here in 1663, and tradition donated to the unknown saint the name of Callixtus also.

There is a long history of bear-keeping at Krummau, from at least the sixteenth century, and the castle has a specially devoted bear moat constructed in 1707. I am delighted to learn that this tradition has been revived by the current Czech overseers of the castle, who clearly are not mere bureaucrats but have a particular devotion to this magnificent place and its history.

The two adult ursine residents of Krummau are Vok and Kateřina. This aristocratic couple gave birth to their son Hubert, while the Zoological Park at Innsbruck has donated the young lady bear Marie Terezie. The bears of Krummau are an absolute delight to the children of the town, who sing carols to them at Yuletide, prepare them delicacies on holidays (under the supervision of the bear-keepers), and make sure that their bears never suffer for want of apples.

The castle also has on display the Golden Carriage of Duke Johann Anton I von Eggenberg, used during the Duke’s 1638 trip to Rome as envoy of the Holy Roman Emperor to Pope Urban VIII. The actual purpose of this coach was to convey the gifts of the Emperor to the Supreme Pontiff. The coach was sent to Hluboká by the Communist authorities, but it has been returned and restored, and rests in the Eggenberg Hall of the castle.

The magnificent Castle Theatre at Krummau is one of the stateliest court theatres in Europe. Among other current uses, it is home to the annual Festival of Baroque Arts organised by Hofmusici, a Czech ensemble of young musicians who perform Baroque-era music on period instruments. In addition to purely musical performances, baroque operas are performed in the Castle Theatre, for which the musicians dress in an appropriate court livery.

It is obvious that the best possible thing for a castle or palace is for a family with deep pockets and deep-rooted traditions to be in possession of it. We must rejoice nonetheless that at least in the case of the State Castle of Český Krumlov, this ancient gem has found caretakers who realise its peculiarity and preciousness.

THE HOLY FATHER, Pope Benedict XVI, recently travelled to the Czech Republic in a journey he described as “both a pilgrimage and a mission.” The ancient land of Bohemia was once at the very center of Christian civilization. It was from here that the brother saints Cyril and Methodius launched their mission to convert the Slavic world. From Prague, the realms of the Přemyslid and then Luxembourg dynasties were ruled, followed by the most illustrious house of Hapsburg. Oh to have been in Prague under the reign of the Emperor Rudolf II! With his mysterious court of astrologers and magicians and his cabinet of curiosities. With Arcimboldo, Spranger, Heintz, and Hans von Aachen putting paint to canvas, Giambologna and de Vries sculpting, while Kepler and Tycho Brahe searched the night skies. Centuries later, long after the nucleus of Hapsburg power had moved to Vienna, it was to Prague that the Emperor Ferdinand came following his abdication and remained until his death in 1875.

But of course there is the other Prague — the city of heresy, rebellion, and warfare. Curiously, this capital has probably experienced more defenestrations than any other city: the killing of seven councilors, including the burgomaster, by Hussites in 1419; the killing of the portreeve and several aldermen by rebels in 1483; the non-fatal defenestration of two governors and their scribe, again by Protestants, in 1618, sparking the Thirty Years’ War; and long-time Czechoslovak politician Jan Masaryk was found dead after a fall from a window in 1948, presumably at the instigation of the Communists who took over.

Bohemia is a land that has been lost to the Faith and regained more than once. There were the Hussite wars of more than fifteen years, in which the Taborite extremists raised their arms against their Catholic neighbors, the pope, and the Holy Roman Empire, before their ultimate defeat. Then, the Thirty Years’ War in which Protestants, with Ottoman Muslim support, gained the upper hand. One of the greatest miracles of the Society of Jesus was that so many lands in which Catholicism had almost collapsed — Poland, Hungary, southern Germany, the Spanish Netherlands, and, yes, Bohemia — were returned to the fullness of the Christian religion through their arduous and unceasing efforts. (The Jesuits also brought to the Czech lands the Baroque architecture for which it is justly famous.)

The recent history of Bohemia and Moravia is, sadly, one of repression. This was firstly — and rather perversely — by the nationalists who secured the country’s independence during the First World War. The anti-religious republicans Beneš, Štefánik, and Masaryk (the father of the previously mentioned Jan) wanted to distance the newly born “Czechoslovakia” from its deeply Catholic past, and created the “Czechoslovak Hussite Church” to lure the faithful toward schism and heresy. Their success was such that within a decade of the new group’s 1920 foundation it claimed over 700,000 members. The church has an almost satanic-looking flag of a blood-red chalice on a black background, a symbol replicated in the black vestments of the group’s clergy.

In 1939, Czechoslovakia (having already surrendered the German-inhabited Sudetenland) was invaded by Nazi Germany and Bohemia and Moravia were declared a protectorate of the Third Reich. Having suffered six years of Nazi occupation, the Czech lands were then conquered by the Red Army in 1945. The Soviets allowed President Beneš to return, and the restored leader immediately issued decrees for the ethnic cleansing of all lands under his control. Beneš eventually sanctioned the “Czech Coup” of February, in which the Communists took over the government, but resigned and then died a few months later. Bohemia and Moravia continued under a Soviet-backed dictatorship until the “Velvet Revolution” brought about the peaceful end of Czechoslovak Communism in 1989.

Eighty years of the Catholic Church being considered an enemy of the government have taken their toll. The church in Czechoslovakia was one of the most-deeply infiltrated in all of Europe, with hundreds of Communist agents entering the seminaries and being ordained priests. The Czech Republic today is one of the least religiously active countries in Europe, with 59% of the population claiming a lack of any religion in the official census. Catholic Christianity remains the largest religion in the country, but only with 26.8% of the population. That this remains so twenty years after the Czech Church regained her freedom is a scandalous indictment of the Church’s hierarchy in Bohemia and Moravia.

And so, recalling that liberation twenty years ago, the Holy Father came to the Czech Republic both on pilgrimage to a land with a deeply Christian history and on mission to a society that feels the very absence of God. “The coming months will see the twentieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, which happily brought a peaceful end to a time of particular hardship for this country, a time in which the flow of ideas and cultural influences was rigidly controlled,” the pope said on arriving in Prague. Despite the happiness that comes with political liberation, the pope noted, “the cost of forty years of political repression is not to be underestimated,” in particular the “ruthless attempt [by the Communist government] to silence the voice of the Church.”

Throughout his speeches during his visit, the pope was keen to remember and celebrate the 1989 revolution — a transfer of power that took place without violence or bloodshed — and to give thanks for the Church’s regained freedom. But the Holy Father also reminded believers that, as he remarked during Vespers at St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, “Society continues to suffer from the wounds caused by atheist ideology, and it is often seduced by the modern mentality of hedonistic consumerism amid a dangerous crisis of human and religious values and a growing drift towards ethical and cultural relativism.” The Communist perpetrator may have disappeared, but his crimes still reverberate throughout the Czech Republic, and indeed all of Eastern Europe and the world.

It is obvious to Benedict that sanctity — the personal love of God and the living-out of that encounter — is the ultimate dignity to which all mankind must aspire, and the ultimate adversary that Communism sought to pervert. The pope’s mission-pilgrimage to the Czech Republic has served to challenge the Czech people (and Christians everywhere following the collapse of Soviet Communism) not to rest on the laurels of having defeated a foe, but rather to continue to fight and build a society in which the dignity of humanity, the sanctity of humanity, is paramount.

Prague

Pope Benedict naturally began his trip to the Czech Republic in the capital city of Prague. As a correspondent of Fr. Zuhlsdorf noted, “The first place he went (at his own request) was the Church of Our Lady of Victory. It is the church – the symbol of recatholisation of the country”. The Church is home to the Infant of Prague, a devotion to the Child Jesus which has spread around the world.

“The figure of the Child Jesus, the tender infant, brings home to us God’s closeness and his love,” the Pope said at the Church of Our Lady Victorious. “We come to understand how precious we are in his eyes, because it is through him that we in our turn have become children of God. Every human being is a child of God and therefore our brother or sister, to be welcomed and respected. May our society grasp this truth! Every human person would then be appreciated not for what he has, but for who he is, since in the face of every human being, without distinction of race or culture, God’s image shines forth.”

The Holy Father donated a crown for the Infant of Prague.

Following the visit to the Church of Our Lady Victorious, the Pope was officially received at Prague Castle by Mr. Václav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic.

Part of the welcoming ceremony included a performance by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra; the Pope is well-known as a lover of music.

Following the welcoming ceremony, Pope Benedict crossed the street to the Cathedral of St. Vitus, located within the Castle complex. Here the Holy Father prayed Vespers with priests, monks, nuns, and members of religious communities.

“Twenty years ago, after the long winter of Communist dictatorship, your Christian communities began once more to express themselves freely, when, through the events triggered by the student demonstration of 17 November 1989, your people regained their freedom. Yet you are well aware that even today it is not easy to live and bear witness to the Gospel. Society continues to suffer from the wounds caused by atheist ideology, and it is often seduced by the modern mentality of hedonistic consumerism amid a dangerous crisis of human and religious values and a growing drift towards ethical and cultural relativism.”

“In this context there is an urgent need for renewed effort throughout the Church so as to strengthen spiritual and moral values in present-day society. I know that your communities are already actively engaged on several fronts, especially in charitable work, carried out under the auspices of Caritas. Your pastoral activity in the field of educating new generations should be undertaken with particular zeal. Catholic schools should foster respect for the human person; attention should also be given to the pastoral care of young people outside the school environment, without neglecting other groups of the faithful. Christ is for everyone!”

“Can he make a better gesture to support the traditional Catholics?” wrote Fr. Z’s correspondent. “An intellectual, giving a crown to an old miraculous doll. Then he meets priests and nuns in the cathedral. Does he talk to them, discuss something? No, he just prays together with them. Vespers, in Latin, nice music. … He demonstrates without words: This is the stuff you ought to do, this is your job – to pray.”

Brünn

The next day, the Pope travelled to Brünn (Brno), the capital of Moravia, to celebrate mass for Moravian pilgrims, as well as those who had come from Bohemia, Slovakia, Austria, Poland, Slovenia, and other nearby countries.

“‘Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ These words of Jesus, written in large letters above the entrance to your Cathedral in Brno, he now addresses to each of us, and he adds: ‘Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls’ (Mt 11:29-30). Can we remain indifferent in the face of his love? Here, as elsewhere, many people suffered in past centuries for remaining faithful to the Gospel, and they did not lose hope; many people sacrificed themselves in order to restore dignity to man and freedom to peoples, finding in their generous adherence to Christ the strength to build a new humanity. In present-day society, many forms of poverty are born from isolation, from being unloved, from the rejection of God and from a deep-seated tragic closure in man who believes himself to be self-sufficient, or else merely an insignificant and transient datum; in this world of ours which is alienated when too much trust is placed in merely human projects, only Christ can be our certain hope. This is the message that we Christians are called to spread every day, through our witness.”

“Proclaim it yourselves, dear priests, as you remain intimately united to Jesus, as you exercise your ministry enthusiastically, certain that nothing can be lacking in those who put their trust in him. Bear witness to Christ, dear religious, through the joyful and consistent practice of the evangelical counsels, indicating where our true homeland lies: in Heaven. And you, dear young people, dear lay faithful, dear families, base on the firm foundation of faith in Christ whatever plans you have for your family, for work, for school, for activities in every sphere of society. Jesus never abandons his friends. He assures us of his help, because nothing can be done without him, but at the same time, he asks everyone to make a personal commitment to spread his universal message of love and peace.”

“May you draw encouragement from the example of Saints Cyril and Methodius, the principal patrons of Moravia, who evangelized the Slavic peoples, and of Saints Peter and Paul, to whom your Cathedral is dedicated. Look to the shining testimony of Saint Zdislava, mother of a family, rich in works of religion and works of mercy; of Saint John Sarkander, priest and martyr; of Saint Clement Maria Hofbauer, priest and religious, born in this diocese and canonized one hundred years ago, and of Blessed Restituta Kafkova, a religious sister born in Brno and killed by the Nazis in Vienna. May you always be accompanied and protected by Our Lady, Mother of Christ our Hope. Amen!”

Prague

Returning to Prague, the Holy Father met with representatives of local Orthodox Churches and of Protestant and other non-Catholic groups.

“We take confidence in knowing that the Church’s proclamation of salvation in Christ Jesus is ever ancient and ever new, steeped in the wisdom of the past and brimming with hope for the future. As Europe listens to the story of Christianity, she hears her own. Her notions of justice, freedom and social responsibility, together with the cultural and legal institutions established to preserve these ideas and hand them on to future generations, are shaped by her Christian inheritance. Indeed, her memory of the past animates her aspirations for the future.”

“This is why, in fact, Christians draw upon the example of figures such as Saint Adalbert and Saint Agnes of Bohemia. Their commitment to spreading the Gospel was motivated by the conviction that Christians should not cower in fear of the world but rather confidently share the treasury of truths entrusted to them. Likewise Christians today, opening themselves to present realities and affirming all that is good in society, must have the courage to invite men and women to the radical conversion that ensues upon an encounter with Christ and ushers in a new life of grace.”

“From this perspective, we understand more clearly why Christians are obliged to join others in reminding Europe of her roots. It is not because these roots have long since withered. On the contrary! It is because they continue — in subtle but nonetheless fruitful ways — to supply the continent with the spiritual and moral sustenance that allows her to enter into meaningful dialogue with people from other cultures and religions. Precisely because the Gospel is not an ideology, it does not presume to lock evolving socio-political realities into rigid schemas. Rather, it transcends the vicissitudes of this world and casts new light on the dignity of the human person in every age.”

Following the ecumenical meeting, the Holy Father was received by members of the Charles University of Prague, and recalled his own past years in a university faculty:

“I address you as one who has been a professor, solicitous of the right to academic freedom and the responsibility for the authentic use of reason, and is now the Pope who, in his role as Shepherd, is recognized as a voice for the ethical reasoning of humanity. While some argue that the questions raised by religion, faith and ethics have no place within the purview of collective reason, that view is by no means axiomatic. The freedom that underlies the exercise of reason — be it in a university or in the Church — has a purpose: it is directed to the pursuit of truth, and as such gives expression to a tenet of Christianity which in fact gave rise to the university.”

“Indeed, man’s thirst for knowledge prompts every generation to broaden the concept of reason and to drink at the wellsprings of faith. It was precisely the rich heritage of classical wisdom, assimilated and placed at the service of the Gospel, which the first Christian missionaries brought to these lands and established as the basis of a spiritual and cultural unity which endures to this day. The same spirit led my predecessor Pope Clement VI to establish the famed Charles University in 1347, which continues to make an important contribution to wider European academic, religious and cultural circles.”

“The great formative tradition, open to the transcendent, which stands at the base of universities across Europe, was in this land, and others, systematically subverted by the reductive ideology of materialism, the repression of religion and the suppression of the human spirit. In 1989, however, the world witnessed in dramatic ways the overthrow of a failed totalitarian ideology and the triumph of the human spirit. The yearning for freedom and truth is inalienably part of our common humanity. It can never be eliminated; and, as history has shown, it is denied at humanity’s own peril.”

Altbunzlau (Stará Boleslav)

In Altbunzlau, the Pope had the opportunity to meet with thousands of young pilgrims who came from all over the Czech Republic and from neighbouring lands.

“Dear friends, it is not hard to see that in every young person there is an aspiration towards happiness, sometimes tinged with anxiety: an aspiration that is often exploited, however, by present-day consumerist society in false and alienating ways. Instead, that longing for happiness must be taken seriously, it demands a true and comprehensive response. At your age, the first major choices are made, choices that can set your lives on a particular course, for better or worse.”

“Unfortunately, many of your contemporaries allow themselves to be led astray by illusory visions of spurious happiness, and then they find themselves sad and alone. Yet there are also many young men and women who seek to transform doctrine into action, as your representative said, so as to give the fullness of meaning to their lives. I invite you all to consider the experience of Saint Augustine, who said that the heart of every person is restless until it finds what it truly seeks. And he discovered that Jesus Christ alone is the answer that can satisfy his and every person’s desire for a life of happiness, filled with meaning and value (cf. Confessions, I.1.1).”

“As he did with Augustine, so the Lord comes to meet each one of you. He knocks at the door of your freedom and asks to be welcomed as a friend. He wants to make you happy, to fill you with humanity and dignity. The Christian faith is this: encounter with Christ, the living Person who gives life a new horizon and thereby a definitive direction. And when the heart of a young person opens up to his divine plans, it is not difficult to recognize and follow his voice. The Lord calls each of us by name, and entrusts to us a specific mission in the Church and in society. Dear young people, be aware that by Baptism you have become children of God and members of his Body, the Church. Jesus constantly renews his invitation to you to be his disciples and his witnesses. Many of you he calls to marriage, and the preparation for this Sacrament constitutes a real vocational journey. Consider seriously the divine call to raise a Christian family, and let your youth be the time in which to build your future with a sense of responsibility. Society needs Christian families, saintly families!”

“I come from the Czech Republic,” Fr. Z’s correspondent writes, “and I am quite frustrated that the Pope’s visit gets such a negative response in the English blogs — or no response at all… In reality, it was fantastic! He touched dynamite at every step, he was very brave, and proudly (for once) I must say, that he was well received, both from the politicians and from the bishops. (Normal Catholics love him, of course). I just wanted you to know that there was more to this visit than eyes of foreigners can see. It was a victory!”

PRINCE KARL VII, current head of the House of Schwarzenberg and sometime foreign minister of the Czech Republic, recently combined with other political colleagues to form a new party in time for the upcoming parliamentary elections in Bohemia. A number of supporters of the Christian & Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People’s Party (KDU-ČSL) were disappointed with the selection of the left-leaning Cyril Svoboda as party chairman, and have formed a new conservative group, Tradice Odpovědnost Prosperita 09 or “Tradition Responsibility Prosperity ’09″.

Prince Karl — or Karel Schwarzenberg as he is known for electoral purposes — suggests that Bohemian voters have grown disenchanted with the current choice of political parties on offer. “The results of the last elections – the worst were the election to the European Parliament, but even the national elections – show that the degree of support for political parties by Czech citizens is going steadily down,” the Prince told Radio Prague.

“People are evidently not content with the parties that are offered to them, and they are more and more fed up. I read this in the e-mails I get and letters, and hear it in pubs and wherever. And as we think that there is still a lot of work to be done in our country, we decided to offer at least some alternative. That’s it.”

The image of the pipe-smoking prince is born on the t-shirts of party volunteers.

Schwarzenberg has gained popularity for straight-talking; the Prince insists Czechs will have to tighten their belts to see themselves through the current economic crisis and suggests they begin by cutting state funding for political parties in half. “For the bigger, long-established parties state payments are vital to their survival,” Radio Prague notes. “The Czech system of political financing makes annual payments to parties on the basis of every vote they get in elections to the lower house, Senate, regional and European elections as long as their total support is over a certain, low, percentage threshold.”

Prince Schwarzenberg has pointed out that TOP 09, which does not yet qualify for state aid, is transparently funded by individuals in contrast to the existing parties. “If you check on the internet, you will see our donors,” the Prince said. “We publish everybody with his full name so you can see everybody who has given us something. Thank God there are quite a lot of people in the Czech Republic who support us and give some amount of money. Not the big companies, but there are smaller entrepreneurs, it is private persons and some, I know, who are not so rich but have given what in their position is quite a lot of money.”

As many as 10% of voters may choose TOP 09 in the next election, and a strong showing by the party could tip the balance of power in favour of the right, as no single party is likely to win an outright majority. But the current hung parliament is having a difficult time determining when the election will actually take place.

Earlier in the year, an interim technocratic government was installed after Prime Minister Topolánek of the ODS was forced to resign after a vote of no confidence. The new administration was half nominated by the formerly ruling coalition and half nominated by the opposition Social Democrats (ČSSD). The parties had planned for an October vote, but a case challenging the electoral law was brought before the Constitutional Court, who nullified the chosen date. The parties then agreed to call for a general election in November, and the KDU-ČSL dissidents led by Schwarzenberg formed their new grouping expecting a short campaign.

Now the ČSSD have inexplicably announced they’ll vote against any move to dissolve parliament in time for November elections, and say they prefer to wait until June 2010 for a general election.

A reader notes in correspondence that Franz Joseph was not always old — though the popular conception certainly is of the Emperor in his later years. Here is the young Franz Joseph (or Ferenc József), just five years after he became Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Bohemia, &c. The Emperor became so at such a young age because his father, Ferdinand I, abdicated after the revolts of 1848.

This portrait is by the Hungarian painter Miklós Barabás, who also completed portraits of the composer Franz Liszt, the novelist Baron József Eötvös de Vásárosnamény, William Tierney Clark, the Bristol engineer responsible for Budapest’s famous Chain Bridge, and many, many others.