Internace biskupů – Kolouch František (2018)

The book deals with the internment of Roman Catholic bishops Josef Hloucha and Karel Skoupý during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia from 1949 to 1968. It presents the efforts of the post-February communist government to transform the Roman Catholic Church into a national church subordinate to the state, as well as the unsuccessful negotiations between government representatives and the bishops. The core part of the book focuses on the internment of the bishops, using the examples of the Bishop of České Budějovice, Josef Hloucha, and the Bishop of Brno, Karel Skoupý. Both bishops were initially detained in their residences and later taken outside their dioceses and interned for several years in secret locations under the supervision of the State Security. The main sources are archival materials and testimonies from witnesses. Based on these, it describes the everyday life of the bishops in internment and its organization. The result is a systematic and factual account of the internment of bishops, one of many crimes of the communist regime in the persecution of the Roman Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia.