Václav Malý

The recorded working language is Czech. Positions recorded include spokesperson of Charter 77 and titular bishop. Distinctions recorded are Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Arnošt Lustig Prize, honorary citizen of Prague 5 and participant in the resistance and resistance against communism.

• Type — Bishope Emeirutus • Honorific Prefix — His Excellency • Title — Auxiliary bishop emeritus of Prague • Church — Roman Catholic • Appointed — 3 December 1996 • Term End — 21 September 2025 • Other Post — Titular Bishop of Marcelliana • Born — 21 September 1950 • Birthplace — Prague, Czechoslovakia • Illustration — Portrait of Václav Malý

Václav Malý was born on 21 September 1950 in Prague. From 1969 to 1976, he studied at the Roman Catholic Saints Cyril and Methodius Faculty in Litoměřice, now part of the Catholic Theological Faculty of the Charles University. He was ordained a priest on 26 June 1976. During the communist regime period in Czechoslovakia, Malý was a signatory of Charter 77 and in 1978 he was a founding member of the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. In January 1979, he was forbidden from exercising his activity as a priest and he was imprisoned without trial from May to December 1979. From 1980 to 1989 he worked as a fireman and surveyor, while secretly continuing to minister as a priest and participating in the creation of a Catholic samizdat. In 1989, during the Velvet Revolution, he was one of the main spokesmen for the Civic Forum and a member of the opposition delegation during the negotiations with the government of Ladislav Adamec. During the 4 December 1989 mass demonstration in Wenceslas Square, he read out the Civic Forum statement demanding free elections the following year and the immediate formation of a coalition government. For his fight against communist totalitarian regime, he was awarded the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in 1998 by the Czech president Václav Havel. In November 2021, Emmanuel Macron, President of France, awarded him the highest French order of merit, the Legion of Honour, for his personal commitment to human rights. Pope John Paul II appointed Malý an auxiliary bishop of Prague on 11 January 1997. Pope Leo XIV accepted his resignation as auxiliary bishop of Prague on 21 September 2025, his 75th birthday.