During the normalisation he helped the persecuted bishop Augustin Podolák
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Dušan Hejbal was born on 16 July 1951 in Prague. His father was expelled from the education system in the 1950s, his mother, a religious teacher, was not given permission by the ministry to continue teaching and for many years worked as a cleaning woman. Dušan Hejbal grew up in a spiritual family and was brought up in the Christian tradition. He was baptized in the Basilica of St. Margaret in Břevnov, where he also served as an altar boy. Around 1968 he accidentally met the Old Catholic Church, which strongly influenced him and awakened in him the desire to become a priest. He joined it, and from 1969 to 1972 he studied at the Huss Czechoslovak Theological Faculty in Prague and was one of the best students. Due to the worsening conditions with the onset of normalisation, he was ordained a priest on 29 June 1971. Due to a petition he organized in support of Bishop Augustin Podolák, whose approval to serve as a bishop was withdrawn by the state, Dušan Hejbal was forced to interrupt his studies in May 1972. Until the fall of the communist regime, he worked as a bricklayer, shopkeeper, tram driver and salesman. Apart from theology, Hejbal was interested in rock music in his youth, singing in bands and later writing lyrics for the rock band Dr. Max. As a close associate of the persecuted Bishop Podolák, he participated in illegal church educational activities. His actions did not escape the attention of State Security, and he was investigated many times for obstructing state supervision of churches. He experienced interrogations in Bartolomějská Street, threats and offers of cooperation for the possibility of continuing his studies. He completed his theological studies only after 1989. In April 1990, Dušan Hejbal was appointed Vicar General, and the following year he became Vice-Chairman of the Ecumenical Council of Churches in the Czech Republic. Since 1993 he has been lecturing on Old Catholic dogmatics and liturgics at the Hussite Faculty of Theology of Charles University in Prague. In September 1997 he was consecrated bishop in Prague, and since 2016 he has been bishop emeritus and administrator of the Prague parish.
