Before him, on the desk, was the accumulated evidence of a three week investigation by his clerk and the most trusted members of his staff. It told a tale that could not be ignored and made a plain statement that could not be avoided. That statement, stripped of all its detail, was simple, the parish of Saint Peter and Saint Paul was in deep financial trouble. As the most important parish in the diocese of Brno, and the parish most favored by the Bishop, this spelt trouble for everyone, especially the chief financial officer of the diocese - Josef Schrattenbach.
The reasons were not hard to find. On average each male Catholic parishioner in Brno gave about two percent of his family income to his local church. Part of this money was sent directly to the diocese and Msgnr Schrattenbach, this was called the "parish assessment", these contributions were one of the three main sources of diocesan revenue. The rest of the collected funds were retained within the parish for the maintenance of its buildings, support of its personnel and the performance of good works. However, no matter how much it retained for its own purposes, each parish deposited all of its revenues and funds with the Bishop's chancery, so, Josef Schrattenbach was in a position to know exactly what was going on. What he saw did not please him.
Collections at the parish of St. Peter and St. Paul had been steadily decreasing for several years, but the shortfall was now reaching crisis proportions. In the opinion of the Bishop this was due to slackness on the part of the parishioners and the general unholy and irreverent attitude of the younger members of the community. But Schrattenbach knew better. The figures gave the true answer; gross contributions to the diocese had not actually decreased, there were still as many true and loyal churchgoers as there ever had been, since the Reformation, but most of the Catholics living in Brno had simply transferred their allegiance, and their Sunday donations, away from the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul and towards the Church of St. Thomas. While parishioners and contributions at St. Peter and St. Paul's went down, those at St. Thomas' went up in direct proportion.
For an explanation he turned to a different analysis. His clerk had listed three reasons for the switch in loyalty. At the bottom of the list was the age of the pastor at St. Peter and St. Paul's. Father Kohl was nearly 75, a Dean of the old school, a high German who had never been a populist or a good orator. With increasing age, Father Kohl had become more and more authoritarian and his Sunday sermons had frequently been source of embarrassment within the diocese. He had taken to attacking, directly from the pulpit, some of Brno's more distinguished and influential citizens. By contrast, and this was the second reason, the parish of St. Thomas' had recently been blessed with a new, much younger pastor. Father Vitezslav was a Czech, dynamic and very directly involved in the lives of his flock. He also preached one of the best Sunday sermons in the whole diocese, and even Msgnr Schrattenbach secretly favored his masses over those given either by the Bishop or Father Kohl.
Alone, these two reasons may have been enough for a few members of the congregation to switch churches. After all, both buildings were in the same diocese, had the same Bishop and were within easy walking distance of one another. It was a simple matter for any good Catholic to vote with his feet and transfer to St. Thomas', if he had felt he was getting better value for his money from Father Vitezslav. But at the top of the clerk's list was the real reason for the major switch in loyalties; the bones of Saint Hugh.
Outside of Brno, Saint Hugh of Lincoln was a neglected and mostly forgotten Saint. Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom there were few who remembered him in their prayers on November 17th., his name day, fewer knew who he was, and even less who knew his story or who he had been. Except in Brno. Here, thanks to the amazing efforts of Father Vitezslav, the last mortal remains of St. Hugh of Lincoln had steadily become an object of serious veneration and a major icon within the parish. It had begun when a child, stricken with smallpox, had been brought to the altar in St. Thomas'. Kneeling in grief, the parents of the child had cried out to God and St. Hugh for a cure, and when, sometime later, the child had cast off the encrustations that covered her face, both God and St. Hugh hand been given equal credit.
Cynics might attest that the child had never had smallpox in the first place, or had simply been afflicted with a bad case of cowpox, but they would have been in a shrinking minority. One recovery followed upon another, and when a blind beggar, who had received charity for years outside the Bishop's palace, suddenly saw the light after touching the bones of St. Hugh, the rush of those wishing to worship at the shrine in St. Thomas' became an avalanche. From then on, any incident of good fortune was attributed to the intervention of the Saint, every conception was a result of the Saint's blessing and each bountiful harvest or good business decision came as a gift of St. Hugh.
Amazed at his good fortune, Father Vitezslav had capitalized on the presence of all his new worshipers. He immediately incorporated St. Hugh into his weekly masses and established the practice of carrying the bones of the Saint around the congregation at the close of the service. At all major feasts, St. Hugh played a prominent role, and steadily those who had come to St. Thomas' only out of curiosity stayed out of growing loyalty to this increasingly popular Saint. Those who worshipped regularly for the salvation of their souls took to asking Saint Hugh personally to carry their prayers to God. Such devotion also carried with it fatter donations, and St. Thomas steadily became a wealthy parish.