Exhibition on the spiritual roots of Visegrad cooperation on show in Prague and Ostrava
17.12.2020
Polish Cultural Institute in Prague prepared the exhibition DO NOT BE AFRAID! The Catholic Church and Central Europe’s road to freedom to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Visegrad Group and the centenary of Karol Wojtyła’s birth.
The aim of the project was to present historical spiritual roots of the Visegrad cooperation, one of the pillars of which is the joint struggle for freedom in the communist era. The exhibition focuses on the new “patron saints of Central Europe”, that is the Church’s prominent figures from the four countries of today’s Visegrad Group. They were cardinals Stefan Wyszyński, József Mindszenty, Josef Beran and Ján Chryzostom Korec. The exhibition is concluded by several panels on Pope John Paul II’s role in the democratization of the whole Central Europe in the 1980s.
“The exhibition was mainly inspired by the current Primate of Bohemia Cardinal Dominik Duka,” explained Maciej Ruczaj, the director of Polish Cultural Institute in Prague. “In his sermon on St. Adalbert’s day, Cardinal Duka said that similar to bishop Adalbert of Prague, who also played an important role in the history of Poland and Hungary, and is the patron saint of the beginnings of Central Europe, John Paul II and the heroic primates of communist Poland, Bohemia and Hungary may be the contemporary patron saints of our region.”
The captions were authored by a writer and journalist Grzegorz Górny. The exhibition showcases unique photos, among others from a collection of Ota Nepilý, a Czech photographer who immortalized Polish and Czech hippies’ pilgrimages to the Częstochowa shrine in the 1970s and 1980s. The charts also featured unpublished images of Czech pilgrims attending the Holy Mass celebrated by John Paul II in Gniezno on his first pilgrimage to Poland in 1979.
So far, the exhibition has been held in Ostrava and Prague during official celebrations of the Velvet Revolution anniversary. Throughout the first half of next year, it is planned to tour many other cities of the Czech Republic, including Brno, Pilsen and České Budějovice.
This outdoor exhibition is PCI’s joint project with the Hungarian Cultural Institute in Prague, Slovak Nation's Memory Institute (UPN), Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (USTR), and the Archbishopric of Prague.
To see a film about the exhibition (in Czech language) go to:
