Ján Havlík – Janko, as his friends called him – was a man of fidelity and perseverance, right to the end. First and foremost, he was faithful to Christ and to his yes to the priestly and Lazarist vocation; faithful in his trusting abandonment to God’s will; unwaveringly faithful to the Church and to the Holy Father; faithful in proclaiming the Gospel, in his apostolate and in charity; faithful in his work; faithfulness in welcoming and accepting suffering; faithfulness to his companions in justice and truth; faithfulness in forgiveness.
Janko was born on 12 February 1928 in the village of Vlčkovany (now Dubovce), the eldest of four children. The family lived in extreme poverty, and from childhood he faced sacrifices in order to attend school. In 1943, at the age of fifteen, he made his vocational choice: he wanted to be a priest and a Lazarist missionary, to proclaim God’s love to the poor. He moved to Banská Bystrica, in the heart of Slovakia, to attend the Apostolic School (the equivalent of a minor seminary) of the Congregation of the Mission of St. Vincent de Paul. In 1948, the communist coup complicated the situation not only for Janko’s formation but also for the Catholic Church in Slovakia, which the new regime considered an enemy of the people.
In 1949, the communist regime intensified its efforts to dismantle the Christian churches in Czechoslovakia, focusing on the Catholic Church, which it considered reactionary and subservient to capitalist powers because of its loyalty to the Vatican. In 1950, after the failure of its attempt to create a state church, the regime planned to eliminate male and female religious orders from the country. The Vincentians were targeted on the night between 3 and 4 May 1950: novice Ján Havlík, along with his companions, experienced deportation, communist re-education, and forced labour.
Three months later, thinking that the “re-education” had borne fruit, the regime sent everyone home. But Janko remained steadfast in his loyalty to Christ and the Church. Despite the danger, together with some of his confreres, he attended a clandestine seminary, determined in his desire to become a priest. The courses were held in the evening, so that they could maintain an appearance of normality by working during the day. However, on 28 October 1951, the secret police raided the seminar and arrested everyone present. They were held prisoner for fifteen months, subjected to violence and torture, before the trial took place between 3 and 5 February 1953. The charge was “high treason aimed at overthrowing our system of people’s democracy”. The sentence was very severe: Ján Havlík was sentenced to fourteen years’ imprisonment, later reduced to ten. He was labelled MUkL (muž určený k likvidácii, man destined for elimination). Resigned to God’s will, he said to his mother: “We wanted to offer God the most holy sacrifice and now we offer him our lives on the paten of love”.
Janko is sent to the labour camps, forced to mine uranium without protection. Despite all the abuse, even in the darkest moments, he remains faithful to his mission, tirelessly dedicating himself to helping his companions, both materially and spiritually. His characteristic trait is his smile, which never leaves his face even during his imprisonment. “With his smile, he radiated peace and hope,” testified a fellow prisoner.
Faithful to the Lord’s calling, even in prison he professes Christian values and does not hide his vocation. This conviction made him a target. He was beaten, locked up in solitary confinement for months, forced to do the hardest work (which, as his jailers themselves pointed out, he always carried out with precision and in the best possible way, even when he was physically exhausted), and brutally interrogated at all hours of the day and night. His friends, seeing him suffer, advised him to be less rigid in his missionary commitment, but for him there were no compromises when it came to being faithful to his commitment to proclaim God’s love and help his brothers and sisters.
Because of this perseverance, he was further accused of crimes against the state and in 1959 was sentenced to another year in prison: his missionary activity was considered incompatible with the ‘religious freedom’ proclaimed by the Czechoslovak constitution.
The last period of imprisonment was the most difficult. Especially in 1958, as he recalls in his memoirs, physical and psychological torture tested his unshakeable faith. Janko went through an experience of profound spiritual confusion from which he emerged in total fidelity to God’s will, committing himself to living “every movement, act, sigh or breath as prayer”.
He entered prison at the age of 23 and was released on 23 October 1962 when he was 34. His health was compromised and debilitated by eleven years of physical and mental suffering, but in the release notice, the authorities stated that ‘it cannot be said that the sentence has achieved its goal of re-education’. Time, suffering, humiliation and persecution failed to weaken his faith.
He spent the last three years of his life at his mother’s house, devoting what little strength he had left to his apostolate, accompanying children to their first communion, visiting the sick, translating religious texts and writing the Way of the Cross for little souls, in which he imagines a child accompanying Christ to Golgotha. He never complained about his incessant suffering or the pain that never left him, nor did he ever utter a word of accusation against his persecutors. ‘He knew how to distinguish between ideology itself and the bearers of ideology,’ wrote a fellow prisoner. He rejected ideology but welcomed everyone, even his jailers.
Janko died on his name day, 27 December 1965, the feast of St John the Evangelist, at the age of 37, a seminarian of the Mission who offered the sacrifice of his own life.
Ján Havlík fully embodies what Pope Francis wrote in Evangelii gaudium: ‘I am a mission on this earth, and that is why I am here in this world’. He was a missionary disciple, wherever he was placed. In the darkness of the mine shafts and tunnels, he participated in clandestine Masses, helping to prepare and distribute the Eucharist, “as if on mission,” he said, “because no missionary could have imagined a better and more difficult place for a mission.”
In our culture of the temporary and the ephemeral, Janko is a witness of fidelity and perseverance. This is also true for consecrated life, in which, as Pope Francis repeats, fidelity is put to the test.
I am a mission for the lives of others: his life, offered “on the paten of love,” is, especially for the entire Vincentian Family, an opportunity to renew our fidelity to Christ, to the Church, and to the Holy Father.
Fr. Serhiy Pavlish, C.M.
Postulator General
