Cardinal Dominik Duka, archbishop emeritus of Prague and political prisoner, died on Tuesday night at the age of 82. The Prague Archbishopric stated this on its website, reports TASR according to the portal iDNES.cz.
- Cardinal Dominik Duka died at the age of 82.
- He will be buried in the chapel of the Cathedral of St. Welcome to Prague.
- Duka was a political prisoner and a member of the Dominican order.
- He served as archbishop of Prague and received many awards.
- He was actively involved in social and religious events.
Duka will be buried in the archbishop’s chapel of the Cathedral of St. Welcome. According to the Prague archdiocese, funeral mass will be held on Saturday, November 15 at 11 a.m. Cardinal Duka this year in October he underwent acute surgery, after being released to home care, however, he was re-hospitalized in a serious condition shortly after. The condolence book will be available from Tuesday noon at 12.00 at the reception of the archbishop’s palace, the portal reports.
Dominik Duka was born in April 1943 in Hradec Králové as Jaroslav. After graduation, he worked in a factory, where he learned to be a mechanical locksmith. Subsequently, he spent two years in military service in Trnava, Slovakia. “I was very lucky that, as a politically unreliable person, I went to the Kovosmalt factory, for example, so I had contact with the everyday life of the workers,” he mentioned this period in an interview for iDnes.cz in 2018. During his stay in Slovakia, he also met a number of prominent personalities there, including, for example, the writer Dominik Tatarka, he added.
After the war, Duka began studying theology in Litoměřice. Then in January 1968 he was admitted to the secret novitiate of the Dominican order and took the religious name Dominik. He was ordained a priest in June 1970.
At first he worked in the border parishes, but in 1975 he lost the then necessary state approval. He ended up in prison for his activities in the Dominican order. There he met other political prisoners, for example the later president Václav Havel, Jiří Dienstbier and other Chartists. After his release, he worked until 1989 in Pilsen’s Škodovka.
After the Velvet Revolution, he lectured on biblical studies in Olomouc, became superior of the Dominicans and in 1998 he was Pope John Paul II. appointed bishop of Královohradec. He has been the archbishop of Prague since 2010, and in 2012 he became a cardinal.
In 2022, he was succeeded by Ján Graubner on the chair of Svatovojteš. Duka was the recipient of numerous awards and honors. The highest is the Order of the White Lion, 1st class, with which he was awarded in 2016 by the then president Miloš Zeman. He was also active in recent months, the portal reports. In April 2025, he was part of the delegation that represented the Czech Republic in the Vatican at the funeral of Pope Francis.
In July of the same year, he preached at a Cyril-Method pilgrimage in Nitra in western Slovakia, which was organized by the government of Prime Minister Robert Fico. During his sermon, Duka asked the Slovaks for forgiveness for the Czechs, who teach them about democracy and freedom, writes iDnes.cz.
In September 2025, he celebrated the funeral mass for the murdered American conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Prague’s Týn Church. In the past, he celebrated funeral mass for other well-known personalities, for example, for Karel Gott, Václav Havel or one of his predecessors, Cardinal Jozef Baran.
