Číhošť miracle

[5] Later, he recorded the testimonies of 19 witnesses and soon after that, on 21 December, SNB (Czechoslovak National Security Corps) officers arrived to the village to examine the church.

[6] The information about the miracle quickly spread and caught the attention of the authorities of the Communist state established after the coup d'état of 1948 in Czechoslovakia.

[7] In January 1950, they arrested Toufar and forced him—under brutal torture—to testify that he faked the miracle by installing a mechanical device leading from the pulpit to the cross.

He studied to become a priest and came to Číhošť in 1948, at the time when independent and supranational Catholic Church became a dangerous enemy for the newly established Czechoslovak Communist state.

The police officer František Goldbricht was in the church on 21 December 1949, a few days before the StB agents presented the story about the built-in mechanical device.

[15] The warrant to arrest Fr Toufar was initially assigned to the local StB department in Jihlava, however, it was unsuccessful, as the priest was guarded by parishioners.

[7] During February 1950, his interrogator Ladislav Mácha[19] "has beaten him so severely that on the 23rd of that month, he was unable to sit, move and spoke only very heavily."

He died under the false name J. Zouhar and was buried in a mass grave near to Ďáblice cemetery,[7] allegedly along with a dead elephant from a zoo or a circus performing in Prague.

The death of Josef Toufar and the "Číhošť miracle" have inspired several writers and filmmakers to create works of fiction and propaganda documents surrounding it: