Cardinal Dominik Duka, born on April 26, 1943, in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic, is a significant figure in the Catholic Church. He entered the Dominican Order in 1968 and was ordained a priest in 1970. During the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, Duka faced significant persecution for his religious activities. His state authorization to minister was revoked in 1975, forcing him to work in a factory while secretly continuing his religious duties. In 1981, he was imprisoned for 15 months due to his religious activities.
Duka became Bishop of Hradec Králové in 1998 and was later appointed Archbishop of Prague in 2010. He was made a Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. Throughout his career, he has been an outspoken advocate for human rights and religious freedom, often criticizing the Vatican’s approach to issues such as the persecution of Catholics in China.
Cardinal Duka has also been active in academic and theological circles, contributing to various publications and translating the Jerusalem Bible into Czech. His tenure as a religious leader has been marked by his commitment to upholding Catholic teachings and his efforts to support the faithful under oppressive regimes.
These Last Days News - July 18, 2024
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Cardinal Once Jailed by Communists Criticizes Vatican’s ‘Silence’ About China’s Persecution of Catholics...
TO REMOVE CHRISTIANITY
"One arm of the octopus is communism, atheistic communism. This arm of the octopus will promote discontent, revolution, death. This arm of the octopus will seek to remove Christianity from the earth. O woe unto a man who joins this force!"
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, June 10, 1978
HIGHEST MITRES
"Do not be misled by the outer clothing of man, for there are many wolves in sheep's clothing, wearing the apparel of rank. Know that many have given themselves to satan.
"Pray, pray much for those who wear the highest mitres, for they, too, have set themselves onto the road to hell. Your prayers and your acts of sacrifice and those who hear My voice, pray much for the Red Hats that have gone onto the wide road."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, October 2, 1974
The above Messages from Our Lady were given to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, New York.
LifeSiteNews.com reported on July 17, 2024:
by Peter Martin
A Czech cardinal who was once imprisoned by communists publicly criticized the Vatican under Pope Francis for ignoring Communist China’s human rights abuses and persecution of Catholics.
“Just as silence and complicity with the communist regime damaged my country and made it easier for the government to imprison dissidents, the Church’s silence in the face of human rights abuses by Communist China harms Catholic life in China,” Cardinal Dominik Duka, O.P, the archbishop emeritus of Prague, said in a recent article.
“Hudson Institute scholar Nina Shea has documented that eight Catholic bishops are now believed to be detained indefinitely without trial in China,” he noted. “We know that the great Cardinal Joseph Zen was arrested in 2022 and is now being watched and monitored by the state.”
“Jimmy Lai, a Catholic convert and newspaper owner, has been held in solitary confinement in Hong Kong for more than three years,” the cardinal added.
“Václav Havel (the famous Czech writer and statesman), with whom I once shared a cell, wrote that the only way to fight totalitarian power is for each of us to have the courage to choose to live the truth in our own lives, no matter what,” he continued. “Today, we are again facing totalitarian dictatorships and ideologies. Once again, courageous individuals are paying the price for standing up to them.”
“Strengthened by such modern witnesses, whether known or unknown, Vatican diplomacy must regain and raise its voice to join them in defending the human person and in defending the Gospel. The time of courage has come once again,” he declared.
Duka, ordained a priest in 1970, was banned from ministering as a priest by the communist government of what was then Czechoslovakia, though he continued secretly preaching and teaching seminarians. In 1981, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison for “religious activities.”
The prelate compared the Vatican’s diplomacy with China under Francis to the policy of Ostpolitik employed by Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, in which “the struggle for freedom and human dignity had begun to be set aside in favor of the politics of détente, which was mainly supported by the political left and communist states.”
The “quiet diplomacy” of Ostpolitik “was skillfully overcome under Pope St. John Paul II, who strengthened underground and dissident information networks to raise his voice and extend his reach,” Cardinal Duka recalled. “He insisted that the Gospel of Jesus Christ be made public, no matter what.”
The Czech cardinal also criticized “attempts to exclude the Church – and the truths of the human person – far from the public square” across the West, as well as threats against schools and teachers who resist transgenderism and the firing of people for upholding “the good of marriage and the value of all human life.”
Pope Francis and China
Pope Francis, and the Vatican during his papacy, have faced widespread criticism for their lenient – and even admiring – approach to totalitarian left-wing regimes, particularly China.
China’s Communist government has oppressed the Catholic Church for decades but has significantly intensified its persecution of Catholics and other religious groups under current dictator Xi Jinping.
In recent years, Chinese Communists have arrested and tortured Catholics and other Christians, demolished Catholics shrines, and implemented a surveillance system for clergy. Human rights organizations and Chinese Christian leaders have called the wave of persecution the worst attack on religion in the country since the Cultural Revolution.
Since 2014, the Chinese government has also interned more than one million ethnic and religious minorities in China’s Xinjiang province, reportedly killing some prisoners and subjecting thousands of women to forced abortions, systematic sexual abuse, and involuntary sterilization.
However, despite his normal outspokenness, Pope Francis has rarely mentioned China’s abuses and has downplayed religious oppression in the country, saying that, “In China, the churches are full.”
Pope Francis has also been heavily criticized for his Vatican-China deal, which experts and human rights organizations, including the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, have said has exacerbated the persecution of Chinese Catholics.
The secretive agreement, signed in 2018 and renewed in 2020 and 2022, is understood to allow the Chinese Communist government to select bishops and reportedly recognizes the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), the schismatic, state-backed Catholic “church” in China. As part of the deal, the Vatican recognized seven illegitimate “bishops” installed by the CPA and pushed two bishops of the faithful underground Chinese Church out of their dioceses, replacing them with CPA “bishops.”
Cardinal Joseph Zen, the revered former bishop of Hong Kong, has condemned the Vatican-China deal as a “complete surrender” and called for the resignation of Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin over the agreement.
Pope Francis himself has admitted that underground Catholics “will suffer” under the deal. “There is always suffering in an agreement,” he said in 2018.
But the Argentine pope, who has expressed sympathy for communists, has nevertheless described the deal as “going well,” and Parolin has announced that the Vatican and China intend to renew it again this fall.
"My children, I do not wish to place fear in your heart, but I cannot allow you to go forward without knowing what is happening about you. I assure you, My children, it is not productive to keep the truth from all and to substitute a climate of false hope and false peace. Know, My children, it is by peace, peace, peace--when the world cries peace the highest and the loudest, know that the destruction is at hand! Do you think there is honesty among thieves? Do you think there is honesty among atheists? Are you so blind, My children, not to recognize that communism has a great hold upon your country and the countries of the world?
"O My children, I warned you many years ago, I warned you in Fatima that, unless you prayed and did penance, Russia and the agents of the sickle and the hammer would go throughout the world cutting down nations and bringing death, destruction, and slavery."
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady of the Roses, April 2, 1977
THE WAR OF THE SPIRITS
“You cannot understand the Eternal Father in His ways, My child. The Eternal Father allows man to proceed upon his own course. No evil is ever triumphant. The Eternal Father will turn all evil to good.
"This is, My child, you must understand, the war of the spirits. As Lucifer and his agents--satan roams your world now, known as, through history, as 666. He will be allowed but a short time longer for his reign. But the Eternal Father will allow him to proceed as a manner to separate the sheep from the goats, and to cleanse My Son's Church.”
- The Bayside Prophecies
Our Lady, September 28, 1979.
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