I’ve been to Prague more times than I’ve been to Paris, and always I would go to the Discalced Carmelite Church of Our Lady of Victories in Malá Strana,. It is this side of Prague, where the Prague Castle is, that I discovered first on a solo trip.

The first time I went to Prague, I went on a whim—and blindly. I didn’t even consult Google to make the most of my trip. My assistant booked me a hotel on Nerudova Street in Malá Strana, otherwise known as the Lesser Quarter of Prague. Save for the interesting fact that it was named after the Bohemian writer, journalist, and poet Jan Neruda, after whom Chile’s national poet, the more internationally known Pablo Neruda, named himself, I had no idea where it was and what it was like. 

I arrived at the airport and stayed in it for maybe half an hour figuring out how I could go from there to my hotel, having decided that I didn’t want the easy way in. I took the tram to Malostranska Square, where I encountered a Filipino couple, who pointed me in the direction of Nerudova Street and only there did I realize how perfectly located my hotel was, on a street lined with Baroque houses, a couple of palaces, some churches that turned into concert halls in the evening, bars and restaurants, and a quaint bookstore. 

Towering over it are the historic buildings of the Prague Castle, but I still didn’t know it was the Prague Castle when I checked into the hotel, where my room, incredibly cheap as it was, had a four-poster bed hung with gossamer curtains, two huge windows that looked down on Nerudova Street, and—more important to me—a smoking nook above which, as I found out later, towered the Gothic St. Vitus Cathedral within the Prague Castle complex. 

On that first trip to Prague, I chanced upon everything as if by accident. I would walk around not knowing exactly where I wanted to be and, before I knew it, I would be right in front of the Castle Guard, still as a statue, in the courtyard of the Prague Castle. I would take a long walk through the maze of cobblestoned streets and then there was Charles Bridge. Or I would chance upon the swans on the bank of the Vltava River, along which I would stumble upon the Kafka Museum and, down the bend, the bookstore called Shakespeare and Sons, not related to Shakespeare and Company in Paris, and, further down, the John Lennon Wall.

This was also how I discovered the Church of Our Lady of Victories. I didn’t know it was home to the Infant Jesus so beloved by Filipinos more well-traveled than I was until I got back home and many of them who knew I had come from Prague would ask me if I went to see the Sto. Niño.

Since that first trip, I’ve been to Prague many times. I think the Czech Republic is the only country in the world whose north, south, west, and east I’ve seen, at least a part of every corner of this landlocked country at the very heart of Europe. And every time, like the first time, I would find myself at the Church of Our Lady of Victories mainly to see the Child Jesus. 

On a recent trip, just the other week, upon arrival in Prague, I went to the church straight from the airport. There was a mass going on, so all I managed to do was to mumble a brief prayer of thanks at the entrance of the church. My real intention going there was to go to this store across the street to buy these miniature Christmas nativities that a friend wanted me to get for him. 

I didn’t realize that this visit to the Infant of Prague was extra-special until the next day. On yet another tour of the Prague Castle complex, I had burger and fries and a lovely bowl of Vichyssoise for lunch on one of the panoramic balconies at the Lobkowicz Palace, an art museum housed in a 16th century palace within the complex, the only privately-owned palace there. 

Shortly after lunch, while taking in the magnificence of what is simply called the Lobkowicz Collections, which is considered, according to Prague.eu, the official tourist website for Prague, among “Europe’s oldest, finest, and most intact family collections dating back over 1,000 years,” I met William Rudolf Lobkowicz. 

A real Bohemian prince, he is the great-great-great-grandson of Polyxena of Lobkowicz (1566—May 24, 1642), from whom descended, like Prince William, several royal families, including some of the Russian emperors and the kings of Denmark and England. 

So how does meeting Prince William make this last pilgrimage to the Infant Jesus of Prague extra special for me?

It was his great-great-great-grandmother Polyxena who donated the Sto. Niño statue to the Discalced Carmelites of the Carmelite Church of Our Lady Victorious in Prague in 1628. She received the statue as a wedding gift from her mother, the Spanish noblewoman Maria Maximiliana, in 1587, when she married her first husband, William of Rosenberg, high treasurer and high burgrave or governor of Bohemia. Decades after her first husband died, Polyxena married the Imperial High Chancellor Zdeněk Vojtěch Popel of Lobkowitz, from whom descended William.

William, a young prince, only 29, is now devoted to the upkeep of his ancestral heritage, 95 percent of which—such as, according to the CNBC, “three castles, one palace, 20,000 movable artifacts, a library of approximately 65,000 rare books, 5,000 musical artifacts and compositions”—his family has retrieved from, first, the Nazis, and then the communists. His father, after whom William was named, grew up in Boston and moved back in 1990 to what was then still called Czechoslovakia with his wife Alexandra Florescu to make it his life’s work to regain possession of what was left of the Lobkowicz heritage. Prince William, along with his two sisters, Princesses Ileana and Sofia, is doing the same.

Believed to be miraculous and venerated by many for centuries, including the mother of Polyxcena, who believed she received help from it many times, including the late Pope Benedict XVI, who said on his visit to Prague in 2009, “The figure of the Child Jesus, the tender infant, brings home to us God’s closeness and his love,” the 16th century figure of the Holy Infant no longer belongs to the Lobkowicz, but the Lobkowicz family still treasures it.

Does Prince William believe in the Child Jesus, the Holy Infant of Prague? 

“Yes,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. “To this day, we pray to him.”