Abstract
The study analyses the attitudes of the Slovak Catholic bishops in the period following the collapse of the communist totalitarian regime in the former Czechoslovakia. These bishops expressed support for the establishment of an independent Slovak Republic as a subject of international law. Although they did not intervene directly in the political developments of the newly emerging democracy, they publicly declared—through pastoral letters and various official statements—that the Slovak nation was likewise entitled to its own statehood. The most prominent ecclesiastical figures of this period were the then Slovak Metropolitan and Archbishop of Trnava, Monsignor Ján Sokol, and the Bishop of Nitra, Cardinal Ján Chryzostom Korec. The article also presents the views of the Slovak Catholic exile, Cardinal Jozef Tomko, who at that time served in the Holy See during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, the first Slavic pope. By the time of the Slovak national emancipation movement’s culmination (1990–1992), Slovakia had already achieved ecclesiastical independence. During the socialist era, Pope Paul VI, following negotiations between the Holy See and the then Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, had issued on 30 December 1977 the papal constitutions Qui divino and Praescriptionum sacrosancti. These documents separated the territory of the Trnava Apostolic Administration from the Archdiocese of Esztergom and aligned the boundaries of the remaining Slovak dioceses with the existing state borders. In this way, the territory of Slovakia was definitively separated from the former Kingdom of Hungary also in the canonical sense. The independent Slovak Republic, established peacefully and constitutionally on 1 January 1993 through the dissolution of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic, was recognized first by the Holy See, led by Pope John Paul II.