Tomáš Špidlík was born in 1919 in Czechoslovakia. In 1938, he entered the Department of Philosophy at the University of Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic, studying philology. He went to Maastricht in Holland to do his theological studies. In the following year, he entered the Jesuit novitiate and after many interruptions in his education due to World War II, he was ultimately ordained a priest in 1949. A year later, in Florence, he finished his long formation period as a Jesuit.