Felix Maria Davídek (12 January 1921–18 August 1988) was a

bishop A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is c ...

of the

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Life

He was born in Chrlice in what is now the municipal part of Brno,

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

. He was ordained a priest on 29 June 1945 in the Diocese of Brno. He was arrested by the Czech secret police and was in prison from 1950 to 1964. He was secretly ordained a bishop by Bishop Jan Blaha, under appeal to pontifical privileges granted from 1951 to 1989 to bishops in communist countries, on 29 October 1967, and was given the assignment to

pastor A pastor (abbreviated as "Pr" or "Ptr" , or "Ps" ) is the leader of a Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutheranism, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy and ...

the clandestine or so-called

underground Underground most commonly refers to: * Subterranea (geography), the regions beneath the surface of the Earth Underground may also refer to: Places * The Underground (Boston), a music club in the Allston neighborhood of Boston * The Underground ...

church in Communist

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

. It was reported in 1992 that in 1978 the "Vatican ordered Father Davídek to cease performing the duties of a bishop."

Irregular ordinations

Interest in Davídek greatly increased when it was disclosed after his death that, by the account of

Ludmila Javorová Ludmila Javorová (born 31 January 1932 in Brno) is a Czech Roman Catholic woman who worked in the underground church during the time of communist rule in Czechoslovakia and served as a vicar general of a clandestine bishop. She was one of a n ...

and others, he had administered the sacrament of holy orders to Javorová and about four other women. Bishop Blaha declared any such ordinations would have been

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Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

, in his 1994 apostolic letter ''

Ordinatio sacerdotalis ''Ordinatio sacerdotalis'' ( en, Priestly Ordination, italic=yes) is an apostolic constitution issued by Pope John Paul II on 22 May 1994 in which he discussed the Catholic Church's position requiring "the reservation of priestly ordination to men ...

'', wrote that "In order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance ..I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." The irregular situation of priests in the Czech Republic in active ministry, but the validity of whose ordination was in doubt, was largely resolved by 2000 through discussions with the

Holy See The Holy See ( lat, Sancta Sedes, ; it, Santa Sede ), also called the See of Rome, Petrine See or Apostolic See, is the jurisdiction of the Pope in his role as the bishop of Rome. It includes the apostolic episcopal see of the Diocese of R ...

. In February 2000, the

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issued a declaration on the subject, announcing (a) that with regard to celibate priests, a great part (some 50 in all) had accepted the decision of the Pope that they should be conditionally re-ordained, and (b) that a further 22 priests who were married should also be conditionally re-ordained and transferred to the Byzantine-Slav rite as members, for all purposes, of the

exarchate An exarchate is any territorial jurisdiction, either secular or ecclesiastical, whose ruler is called an exarch. The term originates from the Greek word ''arkhos'', meaning a leader, ruler, or chief. Byzantine Emperor Justinian I created the firs ...

of the Czech Republic. There remained the status of some of the bishops and priests secretly ordained who had not accepted the norms (for conditional re-ordination) approved by the Pope, specifically because they were convinced they had already been validly ordained. While the Vatican confirmed that "conditional re-ordination" did not exclude the possibility that the men had previously been validly ordained, it held to the view that the doubts over validity were genuine:

"In reality, based on research done on each case, priestly ordination was not always conferred in a valid manner; perhaps in some cases it may have been, but there remained serious doubts about this, especially in the case of ordinations carried out by Bishop Felix Maria Davidek."Declaration
''On Bishops and Priests Ordained Secretly in the Czech Republic'', §3

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Davidek, Felix Maria 1921 births 1988 deaths Roman Catholic bishops in Czechoslovakia Czech poets Czech male poets Czech Roman Catholic theologians 20th-century Czech poets Women's ordination activists Ordination of women and the Catholic Church 20th-century male writers Czech Roman Catholic bishops Clergy from Brno