Dominik Duka

Who is Dominik Duka?

Dominik Jaroslav Duka O.P. is the 36th Archbishop of Prague and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He previously served as Bishop of Hradec Králové.

Duka was born in 1943 in Hradec Králové. On 6 January 1969 he made temporary profession in the Dominican Order and on 22 June 1970 he was ordained a priest. For five years he worked in various parishes of the archdiocese of Prague and, on 7 January 1972, he made his solemn profession in the Dominican Order.

In 1975, the Communist government deprived him of the authorisation for the sacred ministry. For almost fifteen years – until the regime collapsed in 1989 – Duka worked as a designer at the factories of Škoda at Plzeň. In the meantime, he worked in secret in the Order as a novice master and teacher of theology. He studied at the Theological Faculty of Litoměřice. In 1979, he obtained a licentiate in theology at the Theological Faculty of St. John the Baptist in Warsaw, Poland. In 1981/82, he was jailed in Plzeň. From 1986 to 1998 he was Provincial of the Dominicans in Bohemia and Moravia.

After the fall of communism, Duka was elected Federal President of the Conference of Major Superiors and in the years 1992–1996, Vice-President of the Union of European Conferences of Major Superiors. From 1990–99, he was a lecturer in the Faculty of Theology at the Palacký University in Olomouc, teaching Introduction to Sacred Scripture and biblical anthropology.