Václav Malý

Václav Malý, born in Prague on 21 September 1950, is a Czech Catholic priest and a prominent actor of the 1989 Velvet Revolution. He is titular bishop of Marcelliana and auxiliary bishop of Prague.

Early life

After graduating from the Na Zatlance Grammar School in Prague, Václav Malý studied at the Saints Cyril and Methodius Faculty in Litoměřice from 1969 to 1976. He was ordained a priest on June 26, 1976.

Opposition activity under the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic

Václav Malý was a signatory of Charter 77[1][2] and, in 1978, a founding member of the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. In January 1979, he was forbidden from exercising his activity as a priest and was imprisoned without trial from May to December 1979. From 1980 to 1989 he worked as a fireman and surveyor, while secretly continuing to minister as a priest and participating in the creation of a Catholic samizdat. In 1989, during the Velvet Revolution, he was one of the main spokesmen for the Civic Forum[3] and a member of the opposition delegation during the negotiations with the government of Ladislav Adamec. During the December 4, 1989 mass demonstration in Wenceslas Square, he read out the Civic Forum statement demanding free elections the following year and the immediate formation of a coalition government.

Ecclesiastical career

Václav Malý was appointed auxiliary bishop of Prague on January 11, 1997.[2]

References
  1. "Un signataire de la Charte 77 du printemps de Prague – Portail catholique suisse". cath.ch (in French). Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  2. "Václav Malý (1950)". www.memoryofnations.eu. Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  3. Inside the Magic Lantern, Timothy Garton Ash, 1990.


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