In 1988, Bishop Jan Konzal secretly ordained me a priest
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Josef Rendl was born on 14 November 1953 in Prague and grew up in Vysočany. His father worked as an accountant at the court, his mother took care of the household. The family was religious and regularly attended religious services, but they survived the 1950s without any major harm. After finishing his schooling, Josef Rendl graduated from the secondary construction school, graduating in 1968. At that time he was a member of the short-lived Junák, he was active in sports, but he was not very interested in politics. After graduation, he worked in the design of roads, railways and communications, where he also studied at the Faculty of Civil Engineering by distance learning, and married in 1975. In the first half of the 1970s Josef Rendl was actively involved in the activities of a Christian community, which was formed from about ten families at the instigation of the Salesians. They gathered for common prayers, theological lectures, also organized trips to the countryside or stays at a country cottage near Rokycany. People in the community copied and distributed samizdat or theological literature, copied banned books, and made translations of foreign language texts. Josef Rendl began to study theology and in 1980 was secretly ordained a deacon by Bishop Fridolín Zahradník, eight years later Bishop Jan Konzal secretly ordained him a priest. As a deacon and priest, he personally organized the activities of the community, the creation and distribution of the samizdat. He became familiar with the secret structure of the Church, the conspiracy and indirectly with the repression, as Bishop Zahradník was arrested in 1983 and sentenced to several years in prison in a staged trial for alleged economic offences. The community around Josef Rendel escaped the intervention of the secret police. After 1989, Josef Rendl moved to Charles University, where he oversaw operational matters. At the end of the 1990s he left for the Prague Archbishopric, where he looks after church monuments.
