Tomáš Špidlík

Styles of Tomáš Špidlík
Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	none

Tomáš Josef Špidlík, SJ (17 December 1919 – 16 April 2010) was made a Cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2003. He was ordained a priest of the Society of Jesus on 22 August 1949 in Maastricht. On 21 October 2003, at the age of 83, he was created Cardinal Deacon of the titular church of Sant'Agata dei Goti. Although he was not a voting cardinal, he was created a cardinal to reward him for his theological writings in much the same way as Avery Dulles and Leo Scheffczyk were.

Špidlík was born in 1919 in Boskovice, then Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic. In 1938, he entered the Department of Philosophy at the University of Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic. In the following year, he entered the Jesuit novitiate and after many interruptions in his education due to World War II, he was ultimately ordained a priest in 1949. A year later, in Florence, he finished his long formation period as a Jesuit.

In 1951, Špidlík was called to Rome by Vatican Radio. The programs broadcast to the countries behind the Iron Curtain were a precious aid to a freedom in danger of being slowly but inexorably suffocated. From this work with Vatican Radio sprang a special mission that would always accompany him and that made him known in lands despite their communist domination. Among others, he met with Alexander Dubček, the former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and Václav Havel, who became president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic after the fall of the communist regime. Špidlík's Sunday homilies in the Czech language have been translated and published in various languages including Polish, Romanian and Italian.

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