Skip to content
Prague Catholics rejoice at restoration of Marian statue toppled by angry mob
Hannah Brockhaus

A historic statue of Mary atop a column, torn down by an angry crowd more than 100 years ago, has been restored to its original site in Prague.

The placement of the exact replica of the 17th-century statue in the Czech capital’s Old Town Square June 4 was an event 30 years in the making.

The Marian column, as it is called, was erected to “the singing of Marian songs, the ringing of bells on the tower of the Mother of God in front of Týn [Church] and the applause of the people present,” Karel Kavička told CNA via email.

Kavička is a founding member of an association of historians, artists, and Catholics who have worked for more than three decades to create the replica and to gain the city’s permission to return the Marian column to its historic place.

“From the beginning, we have strived to make the pillar a symbol of reconciliation. Who can be a better symbol of peace than the Virgin Mary?” Kavička said.

He noted Czech Catholics’ joy at the statue’s restoration, but added that many Protestants and non-believers also supported the project because of the statue’s historic and artistic importance in Prague.

The star-crowned Mary and the 52-foot column she sits upon were pulled down by a mob of angry men, led by writer Franta Sauer, on November 3, 1918.

The statue was erected by Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III after the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, in thanksgiving for the end of the siege of Prague by the Swedish army.

After the collapse of the Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire, the statue of the Virgin Mary “was presented as a political symbol, a symbol of the nation’s enslavement,” Kavička explained.

Jan Bradna, a sculptor and member of the Marian column association, told the BBC “it was the people of Prague” who had wanted the original statue, and “who lobbied the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand III for permission to erect it.”

After the establishment of Czechoslovakia as an independent republic in 1918, the Catholic Church became associated with the fallen monarchy and was defamed, Kavička said.

Petr Vana, the man who sculpted the replica Marian statue, told the BBC the toppling of the original took place because of a mob Sauer whipped up in a pub, and that “people didn’t really hate the statue.”

World War II and 40 years of communist regime followed, and since that time, Christian believers have been a minority in the Czech Republic, a largely atheistic country.

Our Lady of Quito's Prophecies.
From 1593 for TODAY!
Click for Free Copy
Free e-book!

Kavička is a co-founder of the Society for the Restoration of the Marian Column on Old Town Square in Prague, which was established in April 1990, “immediately after the fall of the totalitarian communist regime.”

For Kavička, because of his country’s history, the re-erection of the Marian column represents “an opportunity for peace with the hope of a better future.”

“We followed the initiatives of our ancestors, who sought to restore the column immediately after its demolition,” he said. “These activities were interrupted by the Nazi occupation, World War II and then the communist regime. We promised ourselves that our initiative would be the last to fulfill the wishes of many generations.”

Kavička, who has advanced degrees in philosophy and theology, is writing a book about the history and restoration of the Marian column.

He said he had no evidence that the man who led the tearing down of the statue in 1918, Franta Sauer, was Catholic, but it is believed he likely was, in part because he died in a Catholic monastery.

The end of Sauer’s life is believed to be recounted in a historically based poem by Czech poet and playwright Václav Renč.

In The Prague Legend, Renč tells the story of the toppling of the Marian statue, led by an enthusiastic young bohemian artist named Oskar. The poem recounts Oskar’s remorse for his actions, and tells that on his deathbed in a hospital run by Catholic sisters, he received a vision of the Virgin Mary and had a conversion of heart.

The statue of Mary now restored to Prague’s Old Town Square is not the only one of its kind in the Czech Republic. Around the country there are “dozens of Marian columns in the squares of many cities,” Kavička noted.

These Baroque-era — and, in some cases, Renaissance-era — statues “were built by the citizens and representatives of these cities to thank them for their protection in times of plague epidemics or to thank the Virgin Mary,” Kavička said.

Source: CNA

 

© Reproduction is authorized provided the source is acknowledged.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

info@TFPuk.org.uk

© All Rights Reserved 2020
China and the Vatican, two years later there is more persecution

“Compared to the Church in the south, our situation is rather tranquil. In past years we have had a relatively tranquil location; Sunday Masses, solemn Masses, and all activities of prayer proceeded in a more or less regular way. All this ended with the signing of the provisory Sino-Vatican agreement on September 22, 2018

Read More »
The Great Lessons of a Small Being

Someday, when historians study the huge crisis triggered by the coronavirus, they will ask many questions they may already have some elements to answer. Amid the crisis, with Italy still in quarantine, we cannot but ask questions. They are neither few nor trivial.

Read More »
The pandemic and the LGBT agenda

With the COVID-19 pandemic now retreating, a period of reflection begins. Can we learn anything from what happened? Among the lessons that this Chinese virus leaves us, there is one that will cause much discussion: Whatever the LGBT lobby says, men and women are not the same at all.

Read More »
The Coronavirus Is a Call to Return to God

Indeed, the management of the coronavirus crisis accepts no help from outside. God has no meaning or function inside all the efforts to eradicate it. In God’s stead, there are the immense powers of government mobilized to control every aspect of life to prevent its spread. The mighty arm of science scrambles to find a vaccine. The worlds of finance and technology are brought to bear to mitigate the disastrous effects of the crisis.

Read More »
COVID-19 is a call for the conversion of individuals and nations

If today we take a look at the institutionalised evil in our societies we are stunned by its vastness and depth. We discover that, in general, evil is committed by public authorities who imposed it as a lawful duty, forbidding the exact opposite: doing good. The sheer number of evil structures is astounding. Think about the numbers of surgical and chemical abortions that occur,

Read More »
Church Takes Fatima Statue to Quarantined Faithful

This year, due to the mandatory confinement decreed by the Government, the faithful were unable to keep this tradition to express their Marian devotion. For this reason, the Diocese of Cucuta decided to walk the streets carrying the statue of the Blessed Virgin on a caravan to visit her children.

Read More »
Open Letter to the Permanent Council of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil -Excellences: The Time Has Come to Turn the Page on Liberation Theology!

The first names of its signatories, which have become public, are representative of an episcopal current whose doctrine has clearly inspired the writing of the document. They are prelates of German descent, now retired, who in their youth were thrilled with the Marxist revolution promoted by the standard-bearers of Liberation Theology. After the collapse of the USSR, these prelates – and others of the same ideological current – recycled themselves into environmentalist and indigenous utopians.

Read More »
The World on course for a Demographic Catastrophe

By the end of the century, almost every country in the world will have fertility rates below the replacement level, 23 countries will see their population more than cut in half, and if societies do not reorganize, it will be a disaster. Finally, someone who is not labeled as pro-life (and thus discredited) has become aware of the demographic catastrophe that we are facing.

Read More »
The Sanger case proves that abortion is racism

Thus, while some are distancing themselves from Sanger and her ideas about race, this is no problem for the more than 800 abortion clinics spread throughout the United States. Eugenics, for them, is nothing more than a private belief of Margaret Sanger. Eugenics can be certainly condemned but has no affect on the “meritorious” birth control activities at Planned Parenthood.

Read More »
Why a Pro-Abortion Columnist Says the Movement Is in Tatters

A recent op-ed in the British daily, The Guardian, is an eye-opener. The author is Jessa Crispin, a U.S. correspondent for the paper and a former Planned Parenthood employee, who worked at a Texas chapter of the organization for around five years. She bitterly complains that “the pro-choice movement is in tatters” and “Planned Parenthood is part of the problem.”

Read More »
Third Fatima Apparition

Lucia writes, “Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke,

Read More »
First Fatima Apparition

“It was upon saying these last words, ‘the grace of God…’ that for the first time she opened her hands, which emitted a most intense light that penetrated our breasts, reaching the innermost part of our souls and making us see ourselves in God, Who was that light, more clearly than we can see ourselves in the best of mirrors.

Read More »
Let us recall Fatima

At Fatima in 1917, the Blessed Mother herself warned that if humanity did not change its ways and convert, the crisis that had already begun would worsen. In the second part of the secret revealed by the visionary Lucia, Mary announced chastisements that would affect temporal society, but which could be avoided if people converted, if atheism was opposed and the world was consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart. Practically speaking, Mary warned that the moral crisis would provoke a material crisis.

Read More »
Tears, a Miraculous Warning

“The Tears of Our Lady Wet my Finger” by Fr. Elmo Romagosa. It was published on July 20 in the Clarion Herald, a New Orleans weekly, distributed in eleven Louisiana parishes or counties.

Read More »
The Silence of the Faithful

The other day, during Sunday Mass in a leading parish in Milan, the celebrant revealed a chilling fact: after the reopening, in the Ambrosian diocese, only 30% of the faithful returned to the churches. “Families and children have totally disappeared, he said.” The situation in the rest of Italy is not much better.

Without malice, I thought, “you abandoned them during the most critical period of the pandemic, and they now repay you in the same manner.”

Read More »

Free e-book

Fill in & Click SEND
to Receive your free e-book!

our adress:

Milngavie, Glasgow G62 6YJ

Join us by email

We send out quartely emails which you are welcome to receive, at no cost!