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Clemens August von Galen

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Blessed Clemens August Graf Cardinal von Galen (16 March 1878 – 22 March 1946) was the Catholic Bishop of Münster from 1933 to 1946. His term as bishop thus closely coincided with the Chancellorship of Adolf Hitler.

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Direct , Contemporary references

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The Big Switch-Two Fronts

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Clemens August von Galen

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Bishop of Münster

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Appendicitis

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Johannes Poggenburg

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September 1933 to March 1946

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Michael Keller

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Clergy, Human Rights Activist

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1946

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1878

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Blessed Clemens August Graf Cardinal von Galen (16 March 1878 – 22 March 1946) was the Catholic Bishop of Münster from 1933 to 1946. His term as bishop thus closely coincided with the Chancellorship of Adolf Hitler. von Galen was a consistent and tireless critic of the Nazi Party, preaching against the party's policies on euthanasia, criminal justice, education, and its attempts to subvert the ecclesiastical authority of the Catholic Church in Germany. He also wrote essays refuting Nazi racial theories from historical, theological, moral, and even satirical perspectives. He showed open contempt for Nazi efforts to intimidate him into silence, but after Victory in Europe Day would admit that he had been deeply upset by the knowledge that many priests were sent to concentration camps as punishment for disseminating his anti-Nazi sermons. During World War II, the Western Allies found von Galen useful for propaganda purposes; the Royal Air Force used his sermon against Action T-4 in pamphlet drops over Germany. In the Soviet Union he was vilified by the state-run media because of his attacks on Joseph Stalin's human rights record and especially Soviet violations of religious freedom. After the war he found himself falling out of favor with Allied occupation forces. This was partly because he had initially spoken out in support of the war against the USSR, believing that even Hitler looked like a just ruler in comparison with Stalin. He further eroded the Allies' goodwill during the occupation by preaching against brutal Allied occupation policies, agitating for the speedy repatriation of German POWs, and condemning the ethnic cleansing of Germans in territories annexed to the Soviet Union and Poland. However, von Galen had become extraordinarily popular among Germans and other Europeans, and fear of political fallout constrained Allied (particularly British) attempts to muzzle the bishop. (The same fear had, to a much lesser extent, protected him from the Nazis. For instance, Josef Goebbels once overturned a warrant for von Galen's arrest issued by local authorities. Had the arrest been carried out it would very likely have resulted in the bishop's execution.) In early 1946 von Galen was summoned to Rome and made a cardinal by Pope Pius XII, who shared a long and complicated personal history with the bishop going back to Pius' time as papal nuncio in Berlin. Cardinal von Galen returned to Münster and was almost immediately hospitalized. He died of appendicitis in the hospital. Von Galen was beatified on October 9, 2005 by his compatriot, Pope Benedict XVI.

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