THE LION OF MUNSTER: THE BLESSED CLEMENS AUGUST GRAF VON GALEN (MARCH 16, 1878 TO MARCH 22, 1946)

            Every year on March 22, the comrades of Unit 1012 will honor the Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen, who was the Bishop of Münster during World War II.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_of_Munster

The 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. A German nationalist and aristocrat, he became an important figure in Catholic resistance to Nazism. During World War Two, Galen led Catholic protest against Nazi euthanasia and denounced Gestapo lawlessness and the persecution of the church. He was appointed as Cardinal by Pope Pius XII in 1946. He was beatified by the German Pope Benedict XVI, in 2005.

Born into a venerable noble family, von Galen received part of his education in Austria from the Jesuits at the Stella Matutina School in the border town of Feldkirch, on the Austrian border with Switzerland and Liechtenstein. After his ordination he worked in Berlin at Saint Matthias, where he became a close friend of Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli, later to be Pope Pius XII. He disliked intensely the liberal values of the Weimar Republic and was against individualism, socialism, and democracy. Having served in Berlin parishes in years 1906–1929, he became the pastor of Münster's St. Lamberti Church, where he was noted for his political conservatism. A staunch German patriot, he judged that the Treaty of Versailles was unjust and that Bolshevism was a threat to Germany and the Church. He expressed his opposition to modernity in his book Die Pest des Laizismus und ihre Erscheinungsformen [The Plague of Laicism and its Forms of Expression] (1932).

While remaining a staunch nationalist, and supporting some of the "patriotic" aims of the National Socialist government, Galen began to criticize Hitler's movement in 1934. He condemned the Nazi worship of race in a pastoral letter on January 29, 1934, and assumed responsibility for the publication of a pamphlet of essays criticizing the ideology of Nazi ideologist, Alfred Rosenberg, and defending the teachings of the Catholic Church. He was an outspoken critic of certain Nazi policies and, together with Munich's Cardinal Faulhaber and Berlin's Bishop Preysing, assisted with the drafting of Pope Pius XI's 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge. In 1941 he earned the moniker "Lion of Munster", and cemented a reputation as one of the German Church's most outspoken critics of the Third Reich, following a powerful series of sermons denouncing the "euthanising" of invalids, attacks on the Church and human rights. The sermons were illegally circulated, inspiring some German Resistance groups.