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Special to Horizons
PRESOV, Slovakia — The last bishop of the Byzantine Catholic Church who vividly remembered the abolition and liquidation of the Byzantine Catholic Church in 1950, died this month. The former auxiliary bishop of Apostolic Exarchate of Prague, Bishop Jan Eugen Kocis, died Dec. 4, the day after the 52nd anniversary of his secret episcopal ordination, at the age of 93. At the time of his death, Bishop Kocis was the second-oldest Byzantine Catholic bishop in the world and had been a priest 69 years.
Jan Eugen Kocis was born June 25, 1926, in Pozdisovce, present-day Slovakia, in the district of Michalovce, as the youngest of eight children.
As a seminarian in Presov in 1950, he experienced the abolition and the prohibition of the Byzantine Catholic Church. Due to general conscription at the time, he was assigned to the “PTP” Military Labor Camp and was sent to Bohemia, where he served until the end of 1953. He worked in construction and as a lumberjack.
On Jan. 1, 1951, he was secretly ordained a priest in a hospital chapel in Roznava, in present-day Slovakia, by Bishop Robert Pobozny, the local Roman Catholic bishop, with the prior consent of Bishop Peter Gojdich of Presov.
He was released from the army Dec. 31, 1953, and worked in present-day Slovakia in a bakery in Vranov nad Topľou. During this time, he hid in various places, so as not to be arrested and imprisoned.
From the summer of 1955 to February 1958, he hid in people’s houses and barns, and even in a cornfield, where he served the liturgies and ministered the sacraments to the faithful. However, he was captured by the communists Feb. 7, 1958, in Dubravka, while secretly teaching children catechism.
He underwent several trials and was sentenced to four years of imprisonment. He lost all of his civil rights and was confined to remain in the regions of Presov and Kosice for five years.
He was released from prison in 1960, following a general amnesty after two years, when he joined the Plynostav plant in Pardubice, in present-day Czech Republic, where he worked until April 30, 1968.
On his days off, he would travel back to present-day Slovakia, where he secretly ministered among the Byzantine Catholic faithful, as the Byzantine Catholic Church was still banned.
On Dec. 3, 1967, at the age of 41, he received secret episcopal ordination in Brno, Czeckoslovakia, from the secret Bishop Felix Davidek.
The following year, he served for three months as the personal secretary to then-interned Bishop Basil Hopko in Osek, Czech Republic. He was close to Bishop Hopko during the time of his release from prison and during a partial reconstruction of the Byzantine Catholic Church later that year.
He was then assigned to the parish in Klenov, in present-day Slovakia, where he stayed for less than a year.
For the next 21 years, he was a master of ceremony for the Greek Catholic Ordinariate in Presov. However, even after repeated requests, he did not receive state approval to be appointed director of the bishop’s office. In addition to his ceremonial duties, he also helped in parishes across the entire Eparchy of Presov. From 1990 to 1993, he was appointed administrator of the parish in Durdos, Slovakia.
After the establishment of the Byzantine Catholic Vicariate in Prague in 1993, he became its vicar, and the vicar general after the canonical establishment of the apostolic exarchate in 1996. Pope John Paul II appointed him titular bishop of Abritt and auxiliary bishop to the Apostolic Exarchate in Prague on April 24, 2004. A public episcopal ordination ceremony “sub conditione” (with a condition) — in recognition of his first episcopal ordination that was held secretly in 1967 — was held at St. Clement Cathedral in Prague May 15, 2004. He became bishop emeritus two years later.
In 2010, he retired in his native Presov, where lived at the archbishop’s residence and often participated in various celebrations alongside Metropolitan Archbishop Jan Babjak, SJ, of Presov. As long as he could, he celebrated Divine Liturgy daily, with the assistance of a seminarian.
This past summer, a book was published of his memoirs in interview format. The book is titled, “In the Hope of Resurrection.”
Bishop Kocis died at Sts. Cosmas and Damian House in Presov, after having received last rites and the anointing of the sick. His funeral was held at St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Presov Dec. 9.
As published in Horizons, Dec. 8, 2019.
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