The life of St Gorazd of Slovakia
He led the small, newly revived Orthodox Church of the Czech lands through the years between the wars.
In 1942, after Czech resistance fighters assassinated the Nazi governor Reinhard Heydrich, the men responsible hid in the crypt of Gorazd's cathedral in Prague. When he learned of it, he urged them to find another refuge before he left for a consecration in Berlin, but the hiding place was betrayed and the fighters were killed there by the Nazis. In the reprisals that followed, Gorazd wrote to the German authorities taking responsibility on himself, hoping to spare his people and his small church. He was arrested, tortured, and on the fourth of September, 1942, shot by firing squad along with his cathedral's priests and lay leaders, one death among hundreds the Nazis exacted that summer, including the destruction of the entire village of Lidice. The Orthodox Church he had shepherded was closed until the war's end, and he is remembered as a bishop who gave his life to shield his flock.
