Bishop said situation of Czech Church “not easy”

Feb 8, 2007 / 08:30 am

Bishop Vojtech Cikrle, Bishop of Brno, Moravia, spoke with Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) recently, telling the Catholic charity that the Catholic Church in the Czech Republic remains in bad shape.

“After the fall of communism, the situation of the Church is not easy in the Czech Republic,” Bishop Cikrle said during his visit, “we have only 25 seminarians from the five Bohemian dioceses, while 70 from the three dioceses of Moravia,”

“In my diocese, more than 50 percent of the about 1.5 million inhabitants are baptised. Mass attendance, however, is at just about 100,000,” the bishop added.

Bishop Cikrle, who is head of the Czech Bishops Conference Committee for the Family, said that the situation of the family “is not different” from the rest of Europe. “About 67 percent of all marriages are being divorced. Also, many of our young people do not marry, because they do not want to bind,” he said.

The bishop thanked ACN and the charity’s benefactors: “We have brothers in Faith who help us being strong. During the Masses, priests pray for our benefactors.”