State and Church sign agreement on St. Vitus Cathedral

Representatives of the state and the Czech Catholic church have signed an agreement which deals with the day-to-day running of Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral. The cathedral currently belongs to the state, having been seized by the Communists in the 1950s. The church has put in a formal request for the cathedral to be restituted, which is still to be decided upon by a court. On Thursday, delegates from both parties signed an agreement which specified that the state would pay for the upkeep of the cathedral, and that entrance to the place of worship would be for free. According to the newspaper Právo, the church will now pay the state a token rent of 500 CZK (25 USD) a month for the use of the premises. Both parties stressed after the signing of the agreement that this does not resolve the issue of the cathedral’s ownership.