Since first grade, I wanted to be a parish priest
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Lidmila Kukuczková was born on 3 May 1952 in Náchod and spent her childhood in Police nad Metují. Her father Zdeněk Řehák (1919-1976) was a gardener, her mother Miloslava Řeháková (1927-1998) helped him. Lidmila had a brother Zdeněk, four years older. She encountered religion in the first grade thanks to a classmate who was the daughter of a local Czechoslovak Church pastor. Both of them were involved in church activities, educational courses and trips. After graduating from the Secondary General Education School in Broumov, she entered the Huss Czechoslovak Divinity School in Prague in 1970. In Prague she met her future husband Erwin Kukuczka (1944-2022), who was also studying theology, but was advised to quit. The reason was his political involvement against the occupiers after the invasion of Soviet troops in August 1968. He earned his living as a worker, a nurse, and a theatre worker. Although many people talked Lidmila out of this relationship, they married in 1974. In the same year, after graduating from college, she started working as a parish priest in Hostinné. Her husband was a sociable, educated man who was sought after by many people. Numerous visitors came to the parish, including people uncomfortable with the communist regime, led by Egon Bondy and Václav Havel. Lidmila often did not know about them, and her husband deliberately protected her with his silence. In 1976, their son Jan (1976-2023) was born. In 1978 the Kukuczkas were transferred to Hlinsko in Bohemia precisely because of their numerous contacts. Even there, however, acquaintances visited them and more came. Strange visits and interest from the State Security Service (StB) also multiplied. Contact with the church secretary was a matter of course, to whom they had to report their every move. In 1982 they moved for the last time to Ústí nad Orlicí, where their daughters Karolína (1983) and Anna (1987) were born. The witness worked until 2019, when she ended her ministry as a parish priest for health reasons. In 2024 she was living in Ústí nad Orlicí.
