December 11, 1949 : "Číhošt' Miracle" abused by communist secret police to discredit Catholic Church
Even after 75 years, the mysterious phenomenon which occurred during a sermon by parish priest Josef Toufar in a small church in the village of Číhošt' in the Highlands, remains unexplained. The communist secret police tortured the priest to death and launched a terror campaign against the Catholic Church.
Shortly before Christmas, on December 11th 1949, parishioners at a church in the village of Číhošť in Vysočina claimed to have witnessed a cross moving of its own volition during the morning mass celebrated by parish priest Josef Toufar.
This mysterious phenomenon was observed by 20 witnesses, but Toufar himself did not see it. It was only the next day that the priest heard about what occurred from the local blacksmith. By that time the whole village was talking about the incident and news of what became known as the “Číhošť miracle” spread. Shortly after, believers from all over Czechoslovakia began to stream to the small village where the miracle happened.
Priest brutally tortured to death by communist secret police
The communist secret police arrested priest Toufar, and accused him of having staged the "miracle". For a month, Josef Toufar was subjected to incredibly cruel torture, to which he succumbed on 25 February 1950. The planned show trial did not take place, but the Communists used the mysterious event to discredit the Catholic Church, which they saw as an obstacle on the road to rural collectivization.
An unexplained mystery
Despite efforts to discover what happened that day, no explanation has yet been found for the unexpected movement of the cross. Physicists say that there is no scientific explanation for the phenomenon.
Whether it will be possible to explain the miracle of the cross through some newly discovered laws of physics or whether it will remain in history forever as a supernatural phenomenon remains to be seen.
Josef Toufar was far from the only victim of the Communist regime. During the four decades of communist rule, a total of 248 people were executed in Czechoslovakia on charges of political crimes, most of them in the first half of the 1950s. The last execution in Czechoslovakia took place in 1960. Punishments such as forced confinement in labour camps or imprisonment of individuals for allegedly inciting fellow citizens, as well as for attempts to flee the country, were also common.
