This special liturgy served as the occasion for turning over some relics of the late clergymanleader to the Slovak Institute on behalf of the Slovak community. The occasion also marked the 60th anniversary of the martyrdom of Msgr. Tiso, who was hanged in Bratislava at dawn on April 18, 1947 by the postwar Czechoslovak communist collaborators of Eduard Benes, a man who had been restored to the presidency of a country he had deserted before the beginning of World War II. The execution of Dr. Tiso resulted from spurious charges of treason, that is, refusing the Stalin proposal to declare the Slovak Republic a satellite of the Soviet Union.

Assisting Abbot Zeleznik at the Mass were four Slovak American monks from the abbey, Father Albert Marflak, OSB, Father Joachim Pastirik, OSB, Brother Gabriel Balazovic, OSB, and Father Michael Brunovsky, OSB. The latter played the organ andwith vocal assistance of Martin Trojan, a young seminarian from Slovakia currently residing at the abbey- led the congregation in singing. Approximately 60 people attended the Mass, several of whom traveled from Detroit, Chicago, Houston, and Washington, D.C. Also among the faithful was Andrew M. Rajec, National President of the First Catholic Slovak Union.

Dr. Pavlo Presents Tiso’s Relics

During the liturgy, Andrew F. Hudak, Jr., Director of the Slovak Institute, introduced Ludovit Pavlo, M.D. of Derby Connecticut, President Emeritus of the Slovak League of America, who then formally presented the relics of the late Slovak leader to Abbot Zeleznik. These relics comprised material from Msgr. Tiso’s clothing and some soil- both recovered from his gravecontained in a brown, copper urn about ten inches high and six inches in diameter. Abbot Zeleznik delivered an eloquent, stirring and passionate homily about Dr. Tiso’s great service to the Slovak nation and his ultimate martyrdom. At the outset, the abbot (who at the time of Msgr. Tiso’s execution was a freshman at Benedictine High School) said that in all his Google research on the Slovak leader’s life, all he could find was slander, false charges, misrepresentation, and defamatory biographical data. He then posed this rhetorical question: “Where on the internet is there anything truthful about Dr. Tiso?” Sitting in the congregation, I, too, had to wonder what happened to all the reams of pro- Tiso articles by some of the great Slovak writers of the past, such as Dr. Joseph A. Mikus, my uncle, who served as a diplomat in the Slovak government during the time in question; Father Andrew Pier, OSB, former Director of the Slovak Institute; and Dr. Frantisek Hrusovsky, historian, among others, whose material about the late Slovak leader somehow did not find its way into Google and probably not into other internet outlets.

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Video on Tiso's Exhumation

Immediately after the Mass, a large movie screen was set up in front of the altar, and young Slovak seminarian Martin Trojan showed the group a video tape of the March 2007 exhumation of Msgr. Tiso’s body in his grave in the Martin Cemetery in Bratislava in which were found his human remains and priestly paraphernalia. Some of these relics, as mentioned above, were later turned over to Dr. Ludovit Pavlo (on behalf of the Slovak community in the U.S.) on his visit to Bratislava in May 2007. The video tape also included a Mass celebrated for Tiso by Bishop Villam Judak of the Nitra Diocese in Slovakia...