Short Biography of Mother Vojtěcha
Mother Vojtěcha was born on March 25, 1914, in Huštěnovice near Velehrad in a family with seven children. In the baptism, she was named Antonie and very soon, at the age of six, her mother died.
She soon heard God’s calling to religious life and at the age of thirteen she entered a religious community of the Sisters of Mercy of St. Charles Borromeo in Frýdlant nad Ostravicí as a teaching candidate.
She graduated from a teacher’s institute in Prague and after a period of a religious formation worked as a teacher in Třeboň.
During the Second World War she nursed the sick and wounded soldiers in Slaný. After that she worked four years as a headmistress in Brno Líšeň. After the abolition of the school, Mother Vojtěcha was a Superior of the community in Prachatice. A Franciscan priest Remigius Janča had been hiding there, but was betrayed and arrested. Mother Vojtěcha as well as several other sisters were arrested together with him and sentenced to eight years of prison in a communist prison for alleged high treason.
She spent this difficult period of her life bravely in the attitude of faith which she defened against unfair communist trials.
After her release in 1960, she lived in a large community of sisters in Vidnava, and later also as a Superior.
She was elected a General Superior of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy of St. Charles Borromeo at the General Chapter in Znojmo-Hradiště in 1970.
She put her own heart into everything she did. She encouraged the sisters to pray as well as she encouraged the pursuit of a good example and a perfect love in order to contribute not only to the renewal of the congregation, but also the church and the whole world. She persistently invited them to seek their mission and the way of implementing it in the contemporary society.
Until then, the religious life was seen as a sure path leading to holiness. However, the Second Vatican Council brought in this respect a fundamental change in the call for the renewal of religious life. Mother Vojtěcha, alert to the signs of the times, obtained ecclesiastical documents related to this renewal. At that time, it was not only difficult, but also very dangerous. She encouraged their translations, read them, talked about them in meetings with sisters and put them into life. Despite an official ban, she decided to accept in the Congregation girls interested in religious life that were later educated in small communities by older sisters.
Her service culminated in the 150th anniversary of the presence of the Sisters of Mercy of St.Charles Borromeo in the Czech Republic. Mother Vojtěcha died on January, 21, 1988. She died with a reputation for holiness.
The canonization procedure with the Venerable Servant of God has been under way since 1996. On December 6, 2014, the Holy Father Francis signed a decree on the heroicity of virtues. We are now praying for a miracle so that the process can move forward, which is the beatification of the Venerable Servant of God.