Tomáš Špidlík

In 2005 Špidlík delivered the meditation on the first day of the papal conclave just before the first ballot was taken. Because of age he was not eligible to participate in the voting.

On 21 October 2003, at the age of 83, he was created Cardinal Deacon of the titular church of Sant'Agata dei Goti. Although he was not a voting cardinal, he was created a cardinal in recognition of his theological writings.

In 1995 he delivered the annual Lenten retreat meditations for the pope and officials of the Roman Curia. In June he defended his doctoral dissertation at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome. That year marked the beginning of his university career as a professor of Patristic and Eastern Spiritual Theology at various universities in Rome. Špidlík became known as an expert in the spirituality of Eastern Christianity.

In 1951, Špidlík was called to Rome by Vatican Radio. The programs broadcast to the countries behind the Iron Curtain were a precious aid to a freedom in danger of being slowly but inexorably suffocated. From this work with Vatican Radio sprang a special mission that would always accompany him and that made him known in lands despite their communist domination. Among others, he met with Alexander Dubček, the former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and Václav Havel, who became president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic after the fall of the communist regime. Špidlík's Sunday homilies in Czech have been translated and published in various languages including Polish, Romanian and Italian.

Špidlík was born in 1919 in Boskovice, then Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic. In 1938, he entered the Department of Philosophy at the University of Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic. In the following year, he entered the Jesuit novitiate and after many interruptions in his education due to World War II, he was ordained a priest of the Society of Jesus on 22 August 1949 in Maastricht. in 1949. A year later, in Florence, he finished his formation period as a Jesuit.

Tomáš Josef Špidlík, S.J. (17 December 1919 – 16 April 2010) was a Czech prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was a Jesuit priest and theologian. Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal in 2003.