'A martyr who died laughing': The cause of the priest imprisoned by Nazis and Communists advances

The cause of the sanctity of a Catholic priest 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 the Dachau concentration camp after publishing Catholic magazines critical of the Nazis. One issue in particular in 1939 had a cover depicting Christ conquering death represented with symbols of Nazism.

Five years after his release 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 an imprisoned priest. He died in 1959 in a gulag in Leopoldov, Slovakia.

The diocesan phase of the Kajpr cause ended on January 4. Cardinal Dominik Duka offered a mass in the church of St. Ignatius in Prague to celebrate the occasion.

"Adolf Kajpr knew what it meant to tell the truth," Duka said in his homily, according to the Czech Jesuit province.

Vojtěch Novotný, deputy postulator of Kajpr's cause, said the diocesan investigation file sent to Rome included archival documents, personal testimonies and files that had been collected for evaluation by the Vatican to determine whether Fr. Kajpr died a martyr.

Novotný wrote that studying the life of Fr. Kajpr, "I understood why Christian saints are painted with a halo: they radiate Christ and other believers are attracted to them like moths in the light."

He quoted Fr. Kajpr's own words: “We can know how intoxicating it is to fight in the service of Christ, to spend time there with spontaneous naturalness and a smile, literally like a candle on the altar”.

As a journalist and priest, Kajpr was convinced of the idea that "the Gospel should be proclaimed on the pages of newspapers," Novotný said.

"He knowingly asked, 'How can we bring the whole message of pure Christ to people today, and how to reach them, how to speak to them so that they can understand us?'"

Kajpr was born in 1902 in what is now the Czech Republic. His parents died within a year of each other, leaving Kajpr orphaned at the age of four. An aunt raised Kajpr and her brothers, educating them in the Catholic faith.

Due to his family's poverty, Kajpr was forced to drop out of school and work as an apprentice shoemaker in his early teens. After completing two years of military service in the Czechoslovakian army in his early twenties, he enrolled in a Jesuit-run secondary school in Prague.

Kajpr enrolled in the Jesuit novitiate in 1928 and was ordained a priest in 1935. He has served in the parish of St. Ignatius Church in Prague since 1937 and has taught philosophy at the diocesan school of theology.

Between 1937 and 1941, he worked as an editor of four magazines. His Catholic publications caught the attention of the Gestapo who repeatedly berated him for his articles until he was finally arrested in 1941.

Kajpr spent time in multiple Nazi concentration camps, moving from Terezín to Mauthausen and finally to Dachau, where he remained until the camp's liberation in 1945.

Upon his return to Prague, Kajpr resumed teaching and publishing. In his periodicals he spoke out against atheist Marxism, for which he was arrested and accused of having written "seditious" articles by the communist authorities. He was found guilty of high treason in 1950 and sentenced to 12 years in the gulags.

According to his deputy postulator, Kajpr's other inmates later testified that the priest devoted his time in prison to a secret ministry, as well as educating prisoners about philosophy and literature.

Kajpr died in a prison hospital on September 17, 1959, after suffering two heart attacks. A witness said that at the moment he died he was laughing at a joke.

The Jesuit Superior General approved the opening of the Kajpr cause for beatification in 2017. The diocesan phase of the process officially began in September 2019 after Cardinal Duka obtained the consent of the bishop of the archdiocese where Kajpr died in Slovakia .

"It was through the service of the Word that Kajpr angered the followers of atheist and agnostic humanism," Novotný said. “The Nazis and the Communists tried to eliminate him through a long imprisonment. He died in prison as a result of this torture “.

“His weakened heart broke when, in the midst of the persecution, he laughed with joy. He is a martyr who died laughing. "