(CNA) The sainthood cause of a Catholic priest who was imprisoned by both the Nazis and the communists has advanced with the conclusion of the initial diocesan phase of the cause.
Fr. Adolf Kajpr was a Jesuit priest and journalist who was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp after publishing Catholic magazines critical of the Nazis.
Five years after his liberation from Dachau in 1945, Kajpr was arrested by the communist authorities in Prague and sentenced to 12 years in a gulag for writing “seditious” articles.
Kajpr spent more than half of his 24 years as a priest imprisoned. Kajpr died in a prison hospital on Sept. 17, 1959, after suffering from two heart attacks. A witness said that at the moment he died he had been laughing at a joke.
The diocesan phase of Kajpr’s cause was completed on Jan. 4. Cardinal Dominik Duka offered a Mass in the Church of St. Ignatius in Prague to mark the occasion.
Tej Francis
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