I knew that as a priest, I would be a second-class citizen, and I counted on persecution
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Zdeněk Pluhař was born on 18 August 1959 in a Catholic family in Přerov. He grew up in Ostrava. The father worked on the railway as a shunter, and the mother cleaned, among other things. He went to religious education and ministered in the church for eleven years. He trained as an operating electrician at Klement Gottwald’s Vítkovice Ironworks. He got his high school diploma while working in ironworks. Between 1982 and 1987, he studied at the Faculty of Theology in Litoměřice. As a student, he helped in July 1985 on a commemorative pilgrimage to Velehrad, which turned into an anti-regime demonstration. He also ministered at the cardinal mass. Together with other people, he secretly filmed the entire celebration, at which the pilgrims demanded religious freedom, and whistled at representatives of the government and the Communist Party. After his ordination, he served as a chaplain in Kroměříž and Olomouc. After the revolution, the bishop assigned him a separate parish in Jeseník nad Odrou. In 2021, he was a parish priest in Polanka nad Odrou for more than twenty years.
