“Because I wanted to be a go-between for the prison, I didn’t volunteer and I always ran away. Somewhere along the road I met up with the superiors, and because I had a driving license, I would drive off into a forest somewhere. There I changed into civilian clothes and zoomed off to the prison. I pretended to be a niece or whatever they taught me to do. They also taught me what I should tell Mother Bohumila, for instance. She was a very clever woman, she knew and understood what to expect. They were already one step ahead, they were connected. Say, I told her: ‘Mařenka had to leave last night.’ Mother Bohumila knew I didn’t mean a person but a house. So at first I gave the messages to her, and in time I would visit Abbess Chrizostoma, and I also visited some priests. I always had to say the password, so they wouldn’t be afraid I was an imposter. I would say it was a merry partisan life.”
“We had a hidden printing machine in Moravské Budějovice. There was a house there too, we called Little Anthony, that had the printing machine in it. I always climbed down there, and off it went, and then I would quickly hide the papers in the car. I put some music on loud so that the neighbours wouldn’t know about it. When the music was playing, I printed the things, and then I loaded them into the car and zoomed off to Prague.”
Sister Marie Goretti Boltnarová was born on 1 January 1934 in Svatobořice near Kyjov. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II her family moved to Prague. Immediately after the liberation she started attending the nursing school of the Congregation of Sisters of St Charles Borromeo under Petřín Hill in Prague. Their sincere and committed service to God and the ill and suffering appealed to her to such an extent, that on 1 January 1949 she entered the congregation’s convent. She completed her basic education already as an aspirant. She went on to attend a secondary medical school. In 1952 the Communists closed both the convent and the congregation’s Pod Petřínem Hospital. At that time, Marie worked at a hospital in Pelhřimov; over the years she was transferred to many other locations. However, mainly to care homes and hospitals. The Communist regime tried to break the nuns’ unity by constantly moving them. Sister Marie took her solemn vows in secret on a farm in Podlesí. During the 1950s she carried secret messages into prison to Mother General Bohumila and various interned priests. She was stationed at the Home of St Charles Borromeo in Prague-Řepy. Marie Goretti Boltnarová died on March 8, 2022.
