Gorazd of Prague was the first bishop of the revived Orthodox Church in the Czech lands and a martyr of the Nazi occupation. He was born Matej (Matthias) Pavlik on May 26, 1879, in Hruba Vrbka, Moravia, then part of Austria-Hungary, and was ordained a Roman Catholic priest on July 5, 1902, after studying theology at Olomouc. During his studies he developed a lasting interest in the legacy of Saints Cyril and Methodius and in Eastern Orthodoxy, an interest that shaped the rest of his life.
After the First World War and the founding of Czechoslovakia, Pavlik embraced Orthodoxy. He took monastic vows under the name Gorazd, after the disciple who succeeded Methodius as bishop in Moravia following Methodius's death in 885, and on September 24, 1921, he was consecrated an Orthodox bishop by the Serbian Orthodox Church. Over the following two decades he labored to organize parishes and build up Orthodox life in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, overseeing the building of eleven churches and two chapels, translating liturgical service books into Czech, and giving particular attention to Carpatho-Rusyns returning to the Orthodox tradition.
In 1942 Gorazd's church became the center of one of the most dramatic episodes of the wartime resistance in occupied Czechoslovakia. After the assassination of the Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich on May 27, 1942, Czech resistance fighters took refuge in the crypt of the Cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague. When the hiding place was discovered and the bishop's clergy implicated, Gorazd took the responsibility upon himself, writing to the Nazi authorities to shield his community. He was arrested on June 27, 1942, tortured, and executed by firing squad on September 4, 1942, at the Kobylisy shooting range. He was recognized as a new martyr by the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1961 and formally glorified in 1987; he is commemorated on September 4.
