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Four Sermons of Bishop von Galen from 1941 "Bishop Von Galen describes the NAZI crimes against the law of God" declassified CIA report "copied January 27, 1942" Sermon Against Euthanasia; Sermon Against the Gestapo; Rudolf Morsey: Online-Biografie of Clemens August von Galen on the web-portal Westfälische-Geschichte.de; Münsterski lav i Pio XII.
Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Munster, who spoke out against the "euthanasia" programme in Nazi Germany, was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. [1]During the Second World War, the Roman Catholic Church protested against Aktion T4, the Nazi involuntary euthanasia programme under which 300,000 disabled people were murdered.
In 1941, Bishop Clemens von Galen led protests against the Nazi euthanasia programme. In 1941, a pastoral letter of the German Bishops proclaimed that "the existence of Christianity in Germany is at stake", and a 1942 letter accused the government of "unjust oppression and hated struggle against Christianity and the Church".
Bishop August von Galen's ensuing 1941 denunciation of Nazi euthanasia and defence of human rights roused rare popular dissent. The German bishops denounced Nazi policy towards the church in pastoral letters, calling it "unjust oppression". [8] [9]
On 6, 13 and 20 July 1941, Bishop von Galen spoke against the state seizure of properties and the expulsions of nuns, monks, and religious and criticised the euthanasia programme. In an attempt to cow Galen, the police raided his sister's convent, and detained her in the cellar.
Münster bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen was Preysing's cousin. A conservative nationalist, he began criticising Nazi racial policy in a January 1934 sermon. Galen equated unquestioning loyalty to the Reich with "slavery", and opposed Hitler's theory of German purity. [166] With Presying, he helped draft the 1937 papal encyclical. [166]
Incensed by the Nazi appropriation of Church property in Münster to accommodate people made homeless by an air raid, in July and August 1941, the bishop of Münster, Clemens August Graf von Galen, gave four sermons criticising the Nazis for arresting Jesuits, confiscating church property and for the euthanasia program.
The bishop of Münster, Clemens August von Galen, had rallied to the nationalist cause at the outbreak of war in 1939, but by 1941, his leadership of Catholic opposition to Nazi euthanasia had led to "the strongest, most explicit and most widespread protest movement against any policy since the beginning of the Third Reich."