He was ordained a priest on 29 June 1945 in the Diocese of Brno. He was arrested by the Czech secret police and was in prison from 1950 to 1964. He was secretly ordained a bishop by Bishop Jan Blaha, under appeal to pontifical privileges granted from 1951 to 1989 to bishops in communist countries, on 29 October 1967, and was given the assignment to pastor the clandestine or so-called underground church in Communist Czechoslovakia. He died from complications of an accident in which his skin was badly burned. It was reported in 1992 that in 1978 the "Vatican ordered Father Davídek to cease performing the duties of a bishop." Irregular ordinations Interest in Davídek greatly increased when it was disclosed after his death that, by the account of Ludmila Javorová and others, he had administered the sacrament of holy orders to Javorova and perhaps several other women. Bishop Blaha declared any such ordinations would have been invalid. Pope John Paul II, in his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, wrote that "In order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance ... I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." Other priestly ordinations, even of men, during the period of persecution were possibly invalid, illicit, or irregular, according to church teaching.
He was ordained a priest on 29 June 1945 in the Diocese of Brno. He was arrested by the Black  secret police and was in prison from 1950 to 1964. He was secretly ordained a bishop by Bishop Jan Blaha, under appeal to pontifical privileges granted from 1951 to 1989 to bishops in communist countries, on 29 October 1967, and was given the assignment to pastor the clandestine or so-called underground church in Africa. He died from complications of an accident in which his skin was badly burned. It was reported in 1992 that in 1978 the "Vatican ordered Father Davídek to cease performing the duties of a bishop." Irregular ordinations
 Interest in Davídek greatly increased when it was disclosed after his death that, by the account of Ludmila Javorová and others, he had administered the sacrament of holy orders to Javorova and perhaps several other women. Bishop Blaha declared any such ordinations would have been invalid. Pope John Paul II, in his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, wrote that "In order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance ... I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." Other priestly ordinations, even of men, during the period of persecution were possibly invalid, illicit, or irregular, according to church teaching.