October 10, 2005
A Catholic German bishop who defied the Nazis' racist policies has been beatified by the Catholic Church. Clemens August von Galen "fiercely opposed an ideology which despised humanity and the death machine of the national socialist state", said Cardinal Jose Sariava Martins, who presided over the ceremony in the Vatican on Sunday. Martins is the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Pope Benedict joined ceremony at the end to pay his own personal tribute to his countryman, known as the "Lion of Münster". "Von Galen feared God more than men and this gave him the courage to say and do things which very intelligent people did not do in this period in Germany," Benedict said after praying in front of relics of the cardinal. He said von Galen was "an example for the Church and for all the world."
Von Galen decried Adolf Hitler's policy of eugenics, which called for euthanasia for "unproductive citizens" such as the disabled, in a famous sermon in 1941 while still a bishop in his diocese of Westphalia. Sunday was the 1,200th anniversary of the founding of the archdiocese of Munster, the oldest in Germany, over which he presided from 1933 to 1943. Von Galen himself did not specifically mention the murderous Nazi repression of the Jews. But in three thunderous sermons at the height of the war in 1941 he openly assailed the Berlin regime, risking both his freedom and his life. "Woe betide mankind, woe betide our German people, if the divine Commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill,' ... is not merely violated, but the violation is tolerated and goes unpunished," he said in one of his famous speeches.
