Wallace Toronto — Secret-Police Arrest Led to the Ministry Audience He Had Been Denied (1965)

During his 1965 visit to Czechoslovakia, Wallace F. Toronto's most important interview was to be with the Minister of Religious Affairs at the Ministry of Interior, scheduled tentatively for July 12. Securing the meeting had proved nearly impossible — he had previously been denied any audience with the Ministry of Religion. On July 8, he and Brother Kubiska, the acting mission president, drove about 200 kilometers out into the country to relax at the farmhouse of Brother Kubiska's sister. While Wally rested, two men came to the door, identified themselves as secret police from Prague, and demanded that he return with them to Prague; two more men waited outside to drive the cars. They refused to tell him what they wanted. Yet when they arrived in Prague, they took him directly to the government building where all the ministers had their offices — the very building where the Ministry of Religion was located, which had refused him an audience. In the interrogation that followed, Wally, with newfound courage, bore testimony to his accusers of the truthfulness of the gospel and the humanitarian work the Church had done in Czechoslovakia. The arrest, intended to intimidate, instead placed him in the exact building with the officials he had been unable to reach — a striking providence.