THE CZECH Republic has agreed to give compensation and return property to religious organisations that were persecuted under the communist regime, 20 years after such plans were first mooted.
The deal was approved despite strong reservations from one member of the centre-right ruling coalition and surveys showing that almost 70 per cent of Czechs oppose the €5 billion payout to the Catholic Church and 16 other denominations.
The government finally agreed this week to give the religious groups 56 per cent of their former property which is now held by the state, including large tracts of farmland and woodland and assorted buildings.
The estimated value of the property is 75 billion koruna, or about €2.9 billion. The state will also pay compensation of 59 billion koruna (€2.3 billion) to the churches over the next 30 years.
Prime minister Petr Necas said the move would finally put right a wrong that dated back to the day when Czechoslovakia fell under communist control.
“The Bill tackles a problem of a property injustice – unresolved for 20 years – that the communist regime committed against the church and religious societies after February 25th, 1948 . . . It’s crucial that we’ve managed to agree on it,” he said.
The Bill is now expected to move smoothly through parliament, after causing a minor crisis within the coalition government and fuelling talk that it could collapse.
The Public Affairs party threatened to block the proposal unless it received assurances that savings from tough austerity measures would not be used to repay the churches.
In turn, Necas said he would sack Public Affairs ministers from the cabinet unless they backed the deal – which they eventually did after long negotiations.
“We have reached an agreement with the prime minister that money for the church settlement will come from savings in the state budget, without cuts in welfare areas,” said Radek John, the leader of Public Affairs.
The so-called velvet revolution brought down communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989, and four years later a “velvet divorce” split the country in two.
Some churches, monasteries and other buildings were given back to their former owners after 1989, but a combination of financial concerns and ideological opposition from mostly left-wing groups prevented the completion of church restitution plans.
The lack of urgency also stemmed partly from the Czech Republic’s position as one of Europe’s most secular states, with polls repeatedly showing that most Czechs were either apathetic or hostile to expensive proposals to compensate religious groups.
The government approved the latest plan in the teeth of fears that the Czech Republic is heading for recession, as its export-driven economy starts to stutter because of falling demand across the European Union.
Necas’s government has managed to narrow the budget deficit and intends to overhaul the pension, health and welfare systems, putting a strain on his coalition and his popularity among the republic’s 10.5 million people.
But supporters of the proposals said the country was morally obliged to repay its debts to religious organisations, regardless of the tough economic times.
Culture minister Alena Hanakova said the government deal was an “historic event”, and it was immediately welcomed by the Conference of Czech Catholic Bishops.
The Catholic and other churches suffered harsh suppression during the communist period, particularly in the 1950s, as the authorities sought to crush a perceived threat to their control over society.
During that decade, thousands of priests, nuns and other clergy were sent to jail and dozens were killed.
Though the size of the priesthood declined dramatically, belief held firm across large swathes of the country, particularly in more rural parts of the Czech lands and in Slovakia.
The pursuit of a more liberal socialism in 1968 saw a slackening of control on religion, but the Soviet crackdown on the “Prague Spring” heralded a return to strong oppression through the following decade, when the state sought to reassert its control on all aspects of religious life.
Resistance to communist rule found some expression through the Catholic Church in the 1980s under Cardinal Frantisek Tomasek, but not on a scale comparable with that in Poland.