Clemens August Graf von Galen

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Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen.

Clemens August Graf von Galen (March 16,1878 - March 22,1946) was a German count, Bishop of Münster, and cardinal of the Holy Roman 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 National Socialists.

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.

There were allegations that he was too silent on the crimes against Jewish Germans who were deported to concentration camps. The published sermons of von Galen prove however that he did condemn these. von Galen, further, suffered a virtual house arrest from 1941 until the end of the war. The numerically most significant waves of deportations did not start until the beginning of 1942.

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.

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 formerly Eastern Germany, which was annexated by Poland and the Soviet Union.

Unexpectedly, in the Christmas of 1945 it became known that Pope Pius XII would appoint three new German cardinals, of them Bishop von Galen, who was made a Cardinal on February 18, 1946. He interpreted it as "a sign of the love of the Pope for our poor German people. Before all world he has, as a supranational and impartial observer, recognized the German people as equal in the society of nations". On his travel to Rome, he visited nearly all POW camps on his way and told the German soldiers to be brave, and he smuggled a large number of messages to their families.

Following his return from the cumbersome travel to Rome the new cardinal was celebrated enthusiastically in his native Westphalia. He died a few days after his return from Rome in the St. Franziskus Hospital of Münster. His last words were: Wie Gott es will. Gott lohne es Euch. Gott schütze das liebe Vaterland. Oh, Du lieber Heiland! (How God wants it. God rewards it you. God protects the dear homeland. Oh, you rather savior!). He was buried in the family crypt of the Galen family in the destroyed Cathedral of Münster.

Cardinal von Galen belonged to one of the oldest of most distinguished noble families of Westphalia [link], and was born in the Catholic, southern part of the Duchy of Oldenburg (Oldenburger Münsterland), on the Burg Dinklage. He was son of Count Ferdinand Heribert von Galen, a member of the German parliament for the Catholic Centre Party, and Elisabeth von Spee.

A Paper of Foreign Office called him "the most outstanding personality among the clergy in the British zone... Statuesque in appearance and uncompromising in discussion, this oak-bottomed old aristocrat... is a German nationalist through and through."

The cause for Beatification was concluded positively in November 2004, and was he was beatified on October 9, 2005 in St. Peter's Basilica of Rome.

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Mgr. von Galen spoke out vigorously against the appalling acts perpetrated by his country's "liberators". He did so as early as July 1st, 1945, during a pilgrimage of Munster diocesans. On that occasion he denounced "the ransacking of our homes destroyed by bombs", "the pillaging and destruction of our houses and farms in the countryside by armed bands of robbers", the "murder of defenceless men", "the rape of German women and girls by bestial lechers", the indifference of the occupation forces to the risk of famine in Germany, all these horrors finding justification on the basis of "the false view 'that all Germans are criminals and deserve the most severe punishment, including death and extermination!" (ja Tod und Ausrottung!).

That sermon is quoted in a tribute to Mgr. von Galen written by Dr. Alfred Schickel, director of the Zeitgeschichtliche Forschungsstelle (Contemporary History Research Center) of Ingolstadt, where the full text is archived. The tribute is entitled "Ein furchtloser Kirchenmann und Anwalt seines Volkes" (A fearless churchman and defender of his people).

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