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By Rev Fr Angelo Chidi Unegbu ([email protected])
1) Today is the death anniversary of one of the most famous Catholic bishops of the 20th century. His bravery in the face of political injustice and wickedness singled him out. He became a bishop in what is perhaps the most difficult era of German history: Hitler’s Regime. No one opposed Hitler’s inhumane programme as did Bishop Galen. His powerful sermons which were printed and distributed illegally earned him the nickname: “Lion of Münster”. Hitler wanted to have Galen removed as a bishop, but he was afraid of the turmoil it would generate.
2) In his sermons Galen questioned the justification of policies such as the reign of terror, euthanasia, forced sterilization, and concentration camps. He attacked Hitler for undermining justice, and for reducing the German people to a state of permanent fear. Galen argued that a regime which can do away with the Fifth Commandment (“Thou shalt not kill.”) can destroy the other commandments as well.
3) Galen’s sermons had greater impact than any other one statement in consolidating anti-‘euthanasia’ sentiment. The sermons inspired various people to resist Hitler’s regime and policies, as evident in the Lübeck martyrs, Scholl siblings and so on. Together with Munich’s Cardinal Faulhaber and Berlin’s Bishop Preysing, Galen helped to draft Pope Pius XI’s anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern) of 1937 that exposed Hitler’s evil policies to the world. Galen’s attacks were unheard of and so severe that Nazi officials earmarked him for execution.
4) General Major Hans Oster, a devout Lutheran and a leading member of the German Resistance, once said of Galen: “He’s a man of courage and conviction. And what resolution in his sermons! There should be a handful of such people in all our churches… If there were, Germany would look quite different!”
5) Galen virtually suffered house arrest from 1941 until the end of the war. Documents suggest the Nazis intended to hang him at the end of the war.
6) After the war in 1945, as Germany was being occupied by the allied forces (Britain in this case), he began to criticise their inhumane programmes as well. In a joint interview with British officials, Galen told the international press that “just as I fought against Nazi injustices, I will fight any injustice, no matter where it comes from”. He repeated this position in a sermon on 1 July 1945, which was copied and illegally distributed throughout occupied Germany. The British authorities ordered him to renounce the sermon immediately, but he refused.
7) In 1946 he was made a Cardinal by Pope Pius XII. When he went to Rome for his investiture, the pope who had meticulously followed his sermons, quoted long passages from Galen’s 1941 sermons from memory and thanked him for his courage.
8) Few days after his return from Rome he was diagnosed too late of appendicitis. Before he breathed his last in the hospital bed, 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!” Clemens August Graf von Galen was beatified on 9 October 2005 outside St. Peter’s Basilica by Pope Benedict XVI.
9) As his episcopal motto Galen chose “Nec laudibus nec timore”, meaning “neither by flattery nor by fear”.
10) A paper from the British 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.”
11) In Nigeria when one pleads with the Nigerian church leaders to speak out against social injustice especially those bothering on human life and dignity, some of them will be bold to tell you that “there is a way the Church does her things”. And I ask: Which Church? And, which way, exactly?
BLESSED CLEMENS AUGUST GRAF VON GALEN: PRAY FOR THE NIGERIAN CHURCH ESPECIALLY HER LEADERS
