The 2002 SVU Elias Human Tolerance Award Goes to Prof. Tomas Halik

At the recommendation of the Ad Hoc Nomination Committee, consisting of Dr. Slavomil Hubalek (Charles Univ.), Dr. Jiri Pehe (New York Univ. in Prague), Dr. Jirina Siklova (Charles Univ.), and Prof. Zdenek Slouka (Lehigh University), SVU Executive Board named Professor Tomas Halik as the winner of the 2002 SVU Andrew Elias Human Tolerance Award.

The Committee has been fully acquainted with the life and work of Dr. Tomas Halik, the candidate proposed from within SVU ranks for the Award. The materials before the Committee have reinforced their personal knowledge (some of it reaching back over thirty years) of the candidate as a man of exceptional qualities of humaneness, compassion and tolerance. Tomas Halik has amply demonstrated these qualities at many levels of endeavor.

In his functions, all of them voluntary, as the President of the Czech Christian Academy, as a member of the Ecumenical Council established by John Paul II, and a member of the program committee arranging the international meetings of Forum 2000, convoked by President Havel and bringing together personalities of many lands, religions and cultures, Tomas Halik has been consistently one of the strongest voices for tolerance across all human boundaries. In 1998, Halik spent several weeks with monks in a Buddhist monastery in Kyoto, Japan, seeking bases for mutual understanding. As a human being, Tomas Halik has devoted many years to intensive work in anti-alcoholic institutions and with drug addicts and psychopaths, bringing them relief from their misery.

The award which includes a check for $1,000 was presented to Prof. Halik at the Plenary session of the SVU World Congress in Plzen, June 20, 2002.

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