Andrej Hlinka (27 September 1864-16 August 1938) was a Slovak Catholic priest and the founder of the national conservative Slovak People's Party.
Biography[]
Andrej Hlinka was born in Cernova, Lipto County, Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now a part of Ruzomberok, Zilina region, Slovakia) on 27 September 1864. He became an ordained priest in 1889 and sought to increase the social status of his parishioners, fought against alcoholism, organized educational lectures and theater performances, and founded credit and food bank associations to help ordinary people. Hlinka supported right-wing Catholic ethics and opposed liberalism and secularism, and Hlinka founded the conservative and Slovak nationalist Slovak People's Party in 1913. After World War I, he supported the creation of an independent Czechoslovakia that was free from 1,000 years of Hungarian rule, but he supported increased autonomy for Slovakia within the new state. He supported the Estado Novo regime of Portugal and the Fatherland Front in Austria, while he called German Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler a "cultural beast" for persecuting Christians in Nazi Germany. He died in 1938, the same year as the occupation of Czechoslovakia.