Portal:Catholic Church/Biography Archive/June 2007



Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen (March 16, 1878 – March 22, 1946) was a German count, Bishop of Münster, and Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. An outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, he issued forceful, public denunciations of the Third Reich's euthanasia programs and persecution of the Catholic Church, making him one of the most visible and unrelenting internal voices of dissent against the Nazis.

He was also known as a German patriot and a fierce anti-Communist who favoured the battle at the Eastern Front against Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union.

Von Galen, further, suffered virtual house arrest from 1941 until the end of the war. The numerically most significant waves of deportations of Jews did not start until late 1942, reaching its height only by the middle or even the end of 1944.

In 1945 he told international press that although he and others had been opposed to Nazism, it was their duty to be loyal to their fatherland and thus consider the Allies their enemies. It must be noted, that this particularly refers to the Soviet Union, Communism in general and the Allied air raids on German cities.

He spent the rest of his life forcefully condemning Allied crimes during the occupation of Germany and the terror of the expulsion of German civilians from former German territories in the east, annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union.

Unexpectedly, at Christmas 1945 it became known that Pope Pius XII would appoint three new German cardinals, one of them Bishop von Galen, who was made a Cardinal on February 18, 1946. On his journey to Rome, he visited almost every POW camp on his way and told the German Wehrmacht soldiers to be brave and to behave decently, and he smuggled a large number of comforting personal messages to their worried families.

He died a few days after his return from Rome in the St. Franziskus Hospital of Münster. His last words were: ''Ja, Ja, wie Gott es will. Gott lohne es Euch. Gott schütze das liebe Vaterland. Für ihn weiterarbeiten... oh, Du lieber Heiland!'' ("Yes, Yes, as God wills it. May God repay it to you. May God protect the dear fatherland. Go on working for him... oh, you dear Savior!") He was buried in the family crypt of the Galen family in the destroyed Cathedral of Münster.

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