BL. CLEMENS AUGUST GRAF VON GALEN, BISHOP OF MÜNSTER - 22 MARCH

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 22nd of March

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

BL. CLEMENS AUGUST GRAF VON GALEN, BISHOP OF MÜNSTER

Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen was born of aristocratic ancestry on March 16, 1878 at Dinklage Castle, Dinklage, Oldenburg, Germany. His motto was: Nec laudibus nec timore (neither by flattery nor by fear)

"NEITHER BY FLATTERY NOR BY FEAR"

He was ordained a priest and afterwards worked in Berlin at St Matthias. He intensely disliked the liberal values of the Weimar Republic and opposed individualism, socialism, and democracy. A staunch German nationalist and patriot, he considered the Treaty of Versailles unjust and viewed Bolshevism as a threat to Germany and the Church. He espoused the stab-in-the-back theory: that the German military was defeated in 1918 only because it had been undermined by defeatist elements on the home front. He expressed his opposition to secularism in his book Die Pest des Laizismus und ihre Erscheinungsformen (The Plague of Laicism and its Forms of Expression) (1932). After serving in Berlin parishes from 1906 to 1929, he became the pastor of Münster's St Lamberti Church, where he was noted for his political conservatism before being appointed Bishop of Münster in 1933.

HE HELPED DRAFT POPE PIUS XI's ANTI-NAZI ENCYCLICAL

He condemned the Nazi "worship of race" in a pastoral letter on January 29, 1934, and assumed responsibility for the publication of a collection of essays which defended the teachings of the Catholic Church. He was an outspoken critic of certain Nazi policies and helped draft Pope Pius XI's 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. In 1941, von Galen delivered three sermons in which he denounced the arrest of Jesuits, the confiscation of church property, Nazi attacks on the Church, and in the third, fiercely condemned the state-approved mass killing in the involuntary euthanasia programme of persons with mental or physical defects.

HE DENOUNCED EUTHANASIA

Following this, in September 1943, another condemnation was read at the order of von Galen and other bishops from all Catholic pulpits in the diocese of Münster and across the German Empire, denouncing the killing of "the innocent and defenceless mentally handicapped and mentally ill, the incurably infirm and fatally wounded, innocent hostages and disarmed prisoners of war and criminal offenders, people of a foreign race or descent".

AFTER THE WAR, HE PROTESTED AGAINST THE MISTREATMENT OF THE GERMAN POPULATION BY ALLIED OCCUPATION FORCES

After the war, von Galen protested against the mistreatment of the German population by Allied occupation forces. On April 13, 1945, he raised a protest with American military authorities against the mass rape of German women by soldiers as well as against the plundering of German homes, factories, research centres, firms and offices by American and British troops.

He told the international press that "just as I fought against Nazi injustices, I will fight any injustice, no matter where it comes from".

"I WILL FIGHT ANY INJUSTICE, NO MATTER WHERE IT COMES FROM"

He repeated these claims in a sermon on July 1, 1945, which was copied and illegally distributed throughout occupied Germany. The British authorities ordered him to renounce the sermon immediately, but the bishop refused.

He criticised the British dismissal of Germans from public service without investigation and trial. He forcefully condemned the expulsion of German civilians from former German provinces and territories in the east annexed by communist Poland and the Soviet Union.

A PROPONENT OF CHRISTIAN LEGAL OPINION

When SS-General Kurt Meyer was sentenced to death, von Galen pleaded for his life to be spared: "According to what has been reported to me, General Kurt Meyer was sentenced to death because his subordinates committed crimes he didn't arrange and of which he did not approve. As a proponent of Christian legal opinion, which states that you are only responsible for your own deeds, I support the plea for clemency for General Meyer and pledge for a pardon." 

HE WAS CREATED A CARDINAL

He was created a Cardinal in 1946, and following his return from the wearisome travel to Vatican City, the new Cardinal was celebrated enthusiastically in his native Westphalia and in his destroyed city of Münster, which still lay completely in ruins as a result of the allied air raids. 

"AS GOD WILLS IT"

He died a few days after his return from Rome, on March 22, 1948, in the St Franziskus Hospital of Münster due to an appendix infection diagnosed too late. His last words were: "Yes, Yes, as God wills it. May God reward you for it. May God protect the dear fatherland. Go on working for Him... oh, you dear Saviour!" He was beatified on October 9, 2005.

(Information from Wikipedia. The full article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clemens_August_Graf_von_Galen)