2023-11-18 07:49:25
A memorial service for former Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg will be celebrated on December 16th in Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schönborn will lead the requiem at 12 p.m., as the Archdiocese of Vienna confirmed at the request of the Kathpress news agency. High-ranking representatives from politics and diplomacy are also expected to attend the memorial mass. The official state funeral for Schwarzenberg in Prague will take place on December 9th in St. Vitus Cathedral.
The well-known theologian and sociologist Tomas Halik will give the sermon at the funeral mass in the Czech capital led by Prague Archbishop and Bohemian Primate Jan Graubner. The blessing at the end of the Requiem is carried out by the theologian and musician Salesian Ladislav Heryan, who is known as the “pastor of the underground” during the communist era.
From December 6th to 8th, the coffin with Schwarzenberg’s body will be laid out in the Church of the Order of Malta “Mary under the Chain” in Prague’s Lesser Town, as Filip Stastny, former assistant to the Foreign Minister, announced. The actual burial takes place following the funeral mass in St. Vitus Cathedral in the Schwarzenberg family crypt at Orlík Castle in southern Bohemia.
According to media reports, Tomas Halik explained that Karel Schwarzenberg had actually wanted the Catholic Salvator Church in Prague’s Old Town as the location for the requiem, where he regularly celebrated the services, which were mostly celebrated by Halik. Since the Salvator Church would not be able to accommodate the expected number of mourners, including representatives of European noble houses, St. Vitus Cathedral was chosen.
Schwarzenberg, who was one of the most important political figures in the Czech Republic in the decades following the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989, died a week ago in a hospital in Vienna at the age of 85. After the news of his death became known, Cardinal Schönborn praised him as a “great European” and “politician with firm Christian values.”
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