VATICAN II AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA 125agement of Czech Catholics such as Zvěřina, as well as the Catholic
Church’s Polish pope: John Paul II.56
From 1985 to 1989, the Church in the Czech lands (and even
more so in Slovakia) experienced a revitalization. This is clear. In
a mass pilgrimage to Velehrad in 1985, hundreds of thousands
of Czech and Slovak Catholics expressed their support for the
Church and—at the same time—displeasure with regime poli-
cies. A petition by Moravian shopkeeper Augustin Navrátil gar-
nered more than half a million signatures, as well as the support
of Archbishop Tomášek, in its demands for religious rights and
freedoms. One can look also to the courageous candlelight pro-
test for religious freedom in Bratislava on Good Friday 1988;
to the events connected with the impending canonization of
Blessed Agnes of Bohemia; and to the underground Church that
survived and in some ways even thrived during the period of
“normalization.”57 While these developments were not directly
tied to the Council, most of them reflected its spirit in their con-
cerns for religious freedom and human rights and in their lay
activism. Navrátil’s petition, for example, included among its de-
mands Vatican II–inspired calls for independent lay associations
and parish councils.58
- Already since at least 1977, while he was still archbishop of Kraków, Karol
Cardinal Wojtyła had been urging Tomášek to take a tougher stance toward Czecho-
slovakia’s repressive regime. Just three weeks after his accession to the papacy,
John Paul publicly remarked that he wanted to give the “Silenced Church” a voice;
Cuhra, Československo-vatikánská jednání 1968–1989 (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé
dějiny AV ČR, 2001), 118–19; Svoboda, Na straně národa, 118. - Most or all of these developments are covered in Balík and Hanuš, Katolická
církev v Československu, 29–36; Janice Broun and Grażyna Sikorska, Conscience and
Captivity: Religion in Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: Ethics and Public Policy Cen-
ter, 1988), 85–98; Ramet, “Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia,” 388–90. For a focus
on Slovakia, see David Doellinger, “Prayers, Pilgrimages, and Petitions: The Secret
Church and the Growth of Civil Society in Slovakia,” Nationalities Papers: The Journal
of Nationalism and Ethnicity 30, no. 2 (June 2002): 215–40. - For the English-language text of Navrátil’s petition, see Broun and Sikorska,
Conscience and Captivity, 319–21.