Mons. Mgr. Jan Baxant

"And there I learned a lot from him. For example, he said to me: 'Do you know why artists, actors in particular, often commit suicide? It's because there's no applause. To be an actor is to have applause, to stand on stage, to bow at the end. As soon as there is no applause, there is no success - their personality degrades and they commit suicide.' So this has helped me a lot, because to be the best in something, to be on top, it tempts one to think that they can afford anything, one can do anything and so on... Be careful with that! Your own success can hurt you."

"I was about to turn sixty and I got a call from a nunciature councilor saying that the nuncio needed to talk to me, if it would be possible to have a meeting the next day, somewhere outside the diocese and outside the nunciature. So I said, 'Well, let's meet somewhere in a restaurant for lunch,' because I thought, 'He wants to wish me a happy 60th birthday, doesn't he,' so we went there and we had lunch and he wished me a happy birthday. He gave me a book or something. Well, he finished lunch and he said, 'But, Mr. Vicar General, I have one more thing.' He opened his briefcase and took out a letter, and the nunciature has those really big envelopes. 'Here's another letter, please read it.' And it said: 'I inform you that Benedict XVI. ...has appointed you Bishop of Litoměřice. Please tell the nuncio at the nunciature if you accept this offer.’ That's how I found out. When I read it, I thought, 'This must be a joke or something...' Well, it wasn't a joke. And so there was a moment, after which I said, 'Mr. Nuncio, because I love our Holy Father Benedict and I love you, I accept it.'"

"So on August 21st, we were doing, well we had kind of a bar at the airport in Vary, and I was just going to work in the morning, past the church up there to the vantage point for the bus (number eight) that goes to the airport. And I'm thinking, 'What are all these planes doing here? Planes everywhere, flying around...' Well, I couldn't get to the airport because it was all fenced off. So that's actually how I found out, because I wasn't listening to the radio or the TV. I mean, we didn't even have a television. But this is when... I was only (I was only, that was 1968, I was born in 48, I wasn't even twenty yet, I was nineteen, because I turned twenty in October), but this event made me realize the monstrosity of communism. Exactly this event! It didn’t occur to me before. That we were persecuted? We understood that this was the way it was supposed to be, that we had to pass on our testimonies for Jesus our Savior, and that this is how it was, how it is now, and how it always will be. That if the persecution is not there, Christians will perish or become lazy or indifferent. I even say that light persecution suits us Christians. So yes,with this situation, the occupation, I have fully realized what a dirty business this communism is. And my father, when he still had a year to live, he told us, he couldn't see, the diabetes blinded him. So he said, 'Please don't believe them, it's all a big mess.' We said, 'But please, dad, thank God, communism has fallen in here...' - 'No! It’s only communists changing for other communists.’ And he was right."