„I think we have to take our life as it comes, not to live in illusions life should be different. Man can live in full under any circumstances. Every situation offers benefits or losses. It depends on us how we approach it. Ideal way of living is to take love from Christianity, be able to live by love and to forgive because of love.”
Miroslav Frank was born on 27th July in 1924 in Bánovice nad Bebravou in Slovakia. In his very youth his family moved near Ostrava, where he grew up. He got trained in repairing cars and in 1944 he started to study at monastic schools of Salesian congregation, which he often attended. As many others the Salesian congregation was dissolved in 1950, but a Salesian high school in Přestavlky remained open and Frank successfully graduated there. Frank refused to study in a Salesian seminary in Litoměřice dominated by communists and applied to University of mining in Ostrava. In the meantime he had been supporting underground activities of dispersed Salesians. He had stayed in contact with his brothers in faith. In fifties he had been helping as a secret connection to distribute leaflets from the monastery Želiv, where representatives of the Salesian Order had been detained. Frank also took part in printing a Salesian periodical Cor unum and in organizing secret common campaigns. Miroslav Frank was detained in January 1957 and interrogated in custody four months in one Olomouc prison. On 2nd March in 1957 he was sentenced to two years in prison, which he had served in penitentiaries Ilava and Valdice. Frank was released in 1959. In sixties Frank had privately studied theology and in Brno he had secretly passed trough exams. In the meantime he continued to deepen his formation in the Salesian Order under the leadership of his superiors. In 1968 Frank was ordain as a priest by bishop Trochta. In times of normalization Frank had served as the priest in Bílina and Veneřice near Děčín. Within given limits of communist society he had organized religious life, he had been in close contact with workers and with help of local people he had repaired a church. Despite of repeated threats he would loose his state license for priesthood he was able to remain in his religious service until the fall of communism. Nowadays Frank lives in Salesian center in Prague-Kobylisy.
