Ján Chryzostom Korec

Ján Chryzostom Cardinal Korec SJ ( born January 22, 1924 in Bošany ) is a Slovak Jesuit and retired Bishop of Nitra.

Life

Ján Chryzostom Korec entered the Jesuit order in 1939 and studied Catholic theology and philosophy. Because of the suppression of the Order by the communists he had to quit his philosophical studies. He was ordained a priest in 1950. At the age of 27 years, he Bishop Pavel Hnilica secretly donated on 24 August 1951, the episcopal ordination in the communist era.

In the following nine years Korec worked in a factory. In 1960 he was imprisoned for crimes of pastoral work and sat from 1960 to 1968 in prison, where he devotedly cared for his fellow prisoners. After several entries he was rehabilitated as part of a general amnesty in 1968. In bruised health he had to work in the following years as street cleaners and factory workers. In 1974, the previously pronounced rehabilitation was canceled, and Korec was imprisoned again for four years. 1978 they released him because of his poor health, prematurely from prison. First, unemployed, he found a job as a warehouseman at a chemical plant.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Pope John Paul II appointed him in 1990 to the Bishop of Nitra. In solemn Consistory of 1991 Korec was then taken as a cardinal priest with the titular church of Santi Fabiano Venanzio a Villa Fiorelli in the College of Cardinals.

At Conclave 2005, in which Pope Benedict XVI. was elected, he did not participate, as he had at that time already exceeded the maximum permissible for the active papal election maximum age of 80 years. He was, however, in which the transfer of the body of the late Pope John Paul II present at the meetings of the Congregation, Cardinal who negotiated the beginning of the conclave, and in St. Peter's Basilica.

Since the death of the Czech Bishop Karel Otčenášek 23 May 2011 Korec is the longest-serving bishop in the world.