Born in 1967 in Prague in Czechoslovakia. During his studies at high school in 1984 he came to Christian faith and was baptized in the Catholic church. The following year he applied to study Catholic theology in order to become a priest but because of the communist regime he was not admitted. Only after one year of working at the post office and two years of military service could he start his theological studies. In autumn 1989, he entered the noviciate in the Carmelite Order, still in secret, at the end of the communist era. After the political change in the winter 1989 he interrupted his studies and spent a second noviciate year in Germany at Springiersbach. He finished his theological studies in Olomouc, Czech republic, in 1994. In the following year he was ordained a priest, and in 1995-97 he worked as administrator in two parishes that had been entrusted to Carmelites at Olomouc in 1991.
From 1998-2001 Fr. Ivan completed his licentiate in Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and then he went to Heidelberg, Germany, to do a doctorate in Assyriology - the languages, culture and history of Ancient Mesopotamia. In 2008, he defended his doctoral dissertation at Heidelberg. Since the autumn of that year, he has been teaching Assyriology at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome and working as Archivist at the General Curia of the Order.
Email: ihrusa @ ocarm.org

For the documents before 1935 please contact the archivist of the historical section of the General Archive, Fr. Emanuele Boaga, O.Carm.: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.