Coming from Northern Bohemia, in the so-called Sudetenland, Fr Benno spoke fluent Czech and German, having a mother of German nationality. He met the Salesians at the time of the persecution of the Catholic Church (1948-1989), initially as a boy, in his city of birth, Osek, and then, in the 1960s, when he moved to Prague, where some Salesians had remained present in clandestinity, doing manual work.
Fr Benno was ordained abroad in a clandestine manner in 1972 in Poland by the laying on of hands and the consecratory prayer of the archbishop of Poznan, Msgr. Antonio Baraniak. From 1973 until 1992, during the years of so-called normalization in the then Czechoslovakia, Fr Benes held the role of Provincial Vicar. During this period of persecution for the Catholic Church and its members, he organized clandestine Salesian structures, fostered the Youth Ministry, especially through activities on weekends and summer holidays, and looked after the growth of spiritual vocations in the Salesian Family.
In this way, at the end of communist totalitarianism, there were 200 Salesians, 35 Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, 400 Salesian Cooperators and 70 Don Bosco Volunteers.
Great were the harvests of his work of animation and government after the "Velvet Revolution" of November 1989: with Fr Benes as Provincial, the Salesians of the Czech Republic founded in Prague the Institute of Theology and Social Pedagogy "Jabok", the “Portal” Salesian publishing house, and several new youth centers in Ceske Budejovice, Plzen, Teplice; moreover, they returned to the houses they had built before the World War, in Prague, Pardubice, Ostrava and Brno.
“The memory of Fr Benno Benes will remain engraved with golden letters in the hearts of the Czech Salesian Family,” concludes Fr Zdenek Jancarik, Director of the Czech Salesian Bulletin.
