Our Mission

NAPCCC was established to assure the financial stability of the institutions and structures that serve Czech Refugees and Emigrants worldwide. Specifically our foundation was established for an emergency that threatened Collegio Nepomucenum the Pontifical Czech Seminary in Rome in the early 1980s.

At that time the Church in Czechoslovakia was persecuted and largely existed underground. There was credible evidence that the Seminary would be claimed by the Communist government. A letter  to that effect was sent from the Vatican to Cardinal Bernardin in Chicago, who in turn sent it to Bishop Morkovsky in Houston TX, at that time the only Ordinary in the United States known to be Czech. Bishop Morkovsky wisely sent it on to Fr. Peter Esterka who was then Professor of Moral Theology and Ecumenism at the College of St Catherine in St Paul MN.

Up for the challenge Fr. Esterka gathered a small group of people, mostly from Immaculate heart of Mary Parish in Saint Paul, engaged a lawyer and set up a non-profit entity, incorporated in the State of Minnesota under the name Saint Adalbert Foundation. It accomplished its purpose so successfully in the next decade that it not only helped to save Nepomucenum Seminary but also survived the Communist regime. By 1991 it was necessary to change the name to acknowledge its expanding mission (worldwide) as well as its center in North America. 

Since 1984, NAPCCC has dispersed three and one-half million dollars to give material support to ministry to the Czech diaspora. It goes on as part of the legacy of Bishop Peter Esterka.