The Benedictine community

The Benedictine abbey in Rajhrad experienced very hard times in recent decades. In 1950, under  operation “K”, our abbey was also attacked by special units of the Secret state police and by  units of the People's Militias. The community was dispersed to so-called “concentrating monasteries” which  served as concentration camps for monks.

The abbot Wenceslaus Pokorný and the other monks were interned in Králíky, Hejnice, Osek and  Želiva. After their release from the internment, the monks were not able  to live together and they could not  wear their monastic attire in public. The community was gradually dying out and only two Fathers survived the fall of communism, P. Paul in the Priestly home in Moravec and P. Benedict, who took over the devastated buildings of the abbey from the state, but he was unable to be in charge of the monastery as a result of his advanced  years. P. Radim Valík, the benedict of Břevnov, was temporarily in charge of the monastery until the arrival of a reborn community in July 1997. With the aid of Austrian and German Benedictine monasteries, it was possible to repair the  presbytery building and so create a convent for a community of three. The goal of this small fellowship was to assure the continuity of the Benedictine order in Rajhrad, to restore  life to this abbey and to try to save the ruined buildings, which are immovable property cultural sights.

The original Benedictine community had been founded there in 1084, when the Benedictines first came there from Břevnov. Every year on the 26^th of November we commemorate the anniversary of the monastery’s foundation in the monastic church.