I was where the Lord wanted me to be
Download image
Vlastimil Ovčáčík was born on 28 December 1929 in Kunovice in Wallachia to a very modest household. He grew up with his mother Marie, née Kunová, his father Václav and six siblings. At the age of ten, he entered a grammar school in Velehrad and he studied there until 1942, when the church grammar school was closed. He continued his studies in Valašské Meziříčí, where he graduated in 1948. Studying in Velehrad, where he met a number of great personalities of the Catholic Church and excellent teachers, influenced him so much that he decided to return there immediately after graduation to join the Jesuit order. On the night of 13 to 14 April 1950, he and other brothers and superiors of the order were involuntarily deported to Bohosudov as part of Action K (Akce K). In September, he was assigned to the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP) in Komárno, later in Podbořany and Hájníky in Slovakia, where he fell ill and was treated for gastric ulcers in Ružomberok, Slovakia. He was eventually discharged from the army in April 1951 due to bad health condition. Until 1960, he worked in Zbrojovka Vsetín or in agriculture. He didn’t want to give up his spiritual direction, so he devoted himself to self-study and remained in contact with Jesuit brothers. In 1960, while holding the position of maintenance worker in Stojanov, he was arrested and spent custody in Uherské Hradiště and Brno. The interrogators tried to force his confession of hostility towards the state system and attempts to subvert the republic. Firstly by psychological pressure, but later they also threw him down the stairs with a blanket over his head, on the way from the interrogation in Uherské Hradiště. On 20 May 1960 he was sentenced to eighteen months along with the group around Březina. He spent a year and a half of imprisonment in the correctional labour camp of the Pankrác prison on the housing construction of Nový Hloubětín - he was “employed” by Stavbyt Praha - the Prague company of the Ministry of the Interior. After his release, he gradually completed his professional education in the field of electrical engineering and he worked as an electrician, repairing large construction machines, including cranes. Prior to joining the seminary in 1968, he was employed by the Computer Technology Company in Uherské Hradiště. He was admitted to the Roman Catholic Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology in Prague, based in Litoměřice. They accepted the two years of his previous self-study, so he was ordained a priest on 5 July 1971. He worked in Veselí nad Moravou, Kyjov, Strážnice and Kuželov. Since 2008 he has lived in Velehrad. He died there in March 2022.
