Ján Chryzostom Korec, SJ (22 January 1924 – 24 October 2015)[1] was a Slovak Jesuit priest and a cardinal of the Catholic Church.

His father, Ján Korec, and his mother, Mária Drábiková, were labourers at a local leather factory in Bošany.

On 30 June 1958, he was forced to leave the institute, and on 10 September, he began working as a night watchman for the Prefa Company.

Because the publication of Christian literature was proscribed, Korec wrote samizdat books, which were secretly printed and distributed.

The secret police, the Štátna Tajná Bezpečnost, watched Korec's apartment closely, and two attempts were made to assassinate him.

[5] He was invested as a cardinal in a consistory on 28 June and was named cardinal-priest of Santi Fabiano e Venanzio a Villa Fiorelli.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain and the revival of democracy in Czechoslovakia, Korec became an influential leader in all aspects of social, economic and political developments in Slovakia.

He supported Slovak independence and opposed the Christian Democrats, who implemented stringent free-market policies that caused a rapid rise in unemployment and economic hardship.

In February 2014, Liverpool Hope University, in Britain, awarded him an honorary doctorate for his lifelong achievements on behalf of freedom, democracy and world peace.

Other honorary doctorates were awarded to him by the Polish Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (2003) and Liverpool Hope University, UK (2014).

He was highly criticised by some segments of the community because he was perceived as having a positive attitude towards fascist war criminal Jozef Tiso and the first Slovak Republic.

[7] His book production accounts for more than 80 titles each with several editions and is a prominent part of the Slovak Christian literature of the 20th century.