Doctor of cardinal Beran
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MUDr. Zdeněk Trefný was born in Prague in a family of a Czechoslovak army officer and a teacher. He grew up in the Libeň neighbourhood, where he also attended elementary school. He likes to remember the years when he studied grammar school and the teachers there, some of whom were originally professors from universities that had been closed down by the Nazis. At the end of his studies, Zdeněk and his classmates were ordered to do forced labour in the paramilitary organization Luftschutz. He was assigned to the ambulance team, where he learnt how to provide first aid and treat the wounded, which had an influence on his future life. He decided to become a doctor and he began studying at the faculty of medicine after the war. While a medicine student, he met his future wife, Božena Švábová, during Christian spiritual exercises. The girl was from a Christian family and her father, who was a doctor and director of the District Authority of Public Health in Polička, was arrested and sentenced as a ‘Vatican agent.’ Zdeněk thus asked permission to marry his daughter during a visit in prison. Zdeněk was publishing research articles already as a student and he had a promising scientific career ahead. He thus did not receive a job placement to the border regions when he completed his studies, as was common at the time, but he was accepted to the Institute of Clinical Physiology, where he could focus on research. Later he worked as an assistant lecturer at the faculty of medicine. However, he did not hold the position for too long and he was dismissed three years later, because ‘he was religious and thus not able to educate the students of medicine.’ What played a role in this decision was his marriage with a daughter of a political prisoner and the fact that he had refused to collaborate with the State Police (StB). Zdeněk still continued with his scientific career and he even authored several textbooks. He also worked as a paediatrician and cardiologist. In the early 1960s the husband and wife and their two sons were going to Mukařov to visit archbishop Josef Beran and the bishop of Brno Karel Skoupý and they grew very close. Zdeněk Trefný also visited the archbishop in Radvanov at the time when a typhoid infection allegedly broke out there. Apparently this was a plan to get rid of archbishop Beran, but when Dr. Trefný examined him and declared that he was in good health, he thwarted the scheme. The quarantine order then immediately disappeared. Dr. Trefný then also examined archbishop Beran (who later became a cardinal) in Rome, and he was invited there several times. In 1997 Zdeněk Trefný joined the order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem, which is one of the oldest charity organizations in the world, and which, among other, also helped to establish the hospice in Prague-Bohnice.
