Month: March 2022

Lost in the woods – a Catholic shrine

This is a story that resonates with what is happening today. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio Norfolk and features an interview with my good friend and former BBC colleague Conal O’Donnell.

It’s the extraordinary story of Paul Hoda’c who fled to the UK during World War Two after his native Czechoslovakia was overrun by the Nazis. He settled here and as reminder of both his faith and the forests of his native country he built a Roman Catholic shrine near Dereham in Norfolk.

Here Conal explains how his own family is connected to the strange story of the shrine in the woods.

Matthew Gudgin of BBC Radio Norfolk interviews Conal O’Donnell
Two Roman Catholic wartime SOE survivors, Conal O’Donnell (left) and Paul Hoda’c (right) at the chapel in Spread Oak Wood, Norfolk, which Mr Hoda’c built in his spare time as a thanksgiving for his deliverance from Nazi Germany. Mr Hoda’c, a car worker in the Midlands, for many years  travelled the 300 mile round trip from his home in Leamington Spa to Norfolk, gradually completing the chapel which has now sadly fallen into disrepair.