Better times for the Church...maybe

It seems that after 18 years the State might finally recognize a place of the Christians in the Czech Republic! The government committee prepared an agreement regarding a restitution of the property that was in 1949 confiscated from the Churches which has a high chance to be approved soon by the parliament. The amount of 83 billions CZK (3,20 billions EUR) should be a compensation for 226 hectares of fields, forests, and lakes that were taken away from dioceses and parishes after the communist take over. Areas that belonged to the religious orders and congregations should be returned as well. ‘These, which today take part of the army complexes or have been rebuilt, will not be given back, but also reimbursed’, informed the Vice-Minister of Culture, Jaromír Talíř.

Amount of 83 billions should be divided between the seventeen churches, from which the biggest part will be given to the Roman-Catholics. This would help in a future to separate financially the churches from the State. The agreement also describes a mechanism how should such the discontinuation work: two thirds of 83 billions will be paid during the next sixty years, one billion each year. The land fund would recompense the last third in a form of 19 hectares of fields and 61 hectares of forests. The State contribution to the churches should from 2009 gradually decrease by a desetina each year and stop completely in 2019.

However, it is not all the property that the State would be so eager to give back. As most of the Church buildings were restituted already in1991, the Saint Vitus Cathedral in Prague remains nationalized. It will probably stay like this for a while as in this case it has somehow been forgotten who was the original owner and the State is ready to use all the possible means to keep the shrine under the 1954 court’s decision ‘all people’s possession’. The last, already the third trial between the Roman-Catholic Church and the Czech state, lost in September 2007 the Church. Surprisingly, the verdict was given by the same judge who two times before decided that the cathedral belonged to the Catholics.