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Clemens August Graf von Galen

The Blessed
Clemens August Graf von Galen
Bishop of Münster
CAvGalenBAMS200612.jpg
Cardinal von Galen
Church Roman Catholic Church
Diocese Diocese of Münster
Appointed 5 September 1933
Term ended 22 March 1946
Predecessor Johannes Poggenburg
Successor Michael Keller
Orders
Ordination 28 May 1904
by Hermann Dingelstadt
Consecration 28 October 1933
by Karl Joseph Schulte
Created Cardinal 21 February 1946
by Pope Pius XII
Rank Cardinal-Priest
Personal details
Birth name Clemens August Graf von Galen
Born (1878-03-16)16 March 1878
Dinklage Castle, Dinklage, Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, German Empire
Died 22 March 1946(1946-03-22) (aged 68)
Münster, Province of Westphalia, Allied-occupied Germany
Buried Münster Cathedral
Nationality German
Motto Nec laudibus nec timore (neither by flattery nor by fear)
Coat of arms
Sainthood
Feast day 22 March
Beatified 9 October 2005
Saint Peter's Square, Vatican City
by Pope Benedict XVI

The Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen (16 March 1878 – 22 March 1946) was a German count, Bishop of Münster, and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. During World War II, Galen led Catholic protest against Nazi euthanasia and denounced Gestapo lawlessness and the persecution of the church. He was appointed a Cardinal by Pope Pius XII in 1946. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.

Born into the German aristocracy, Galen received part of his education in Austria from the Jesuits at the Stella Matutina School in the town of Feldkirch, on the Austrian border with Switzerland and Liechtenstein. After his ordination he worked in Berlin at Saint Matthias. He intensely disliked the liberal values of the Weimar Republic and opposed individualism, socialism, and democracy. 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. 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 modernity in his book Die Pest des Laizismus und ihre Erscheinungsformen (The Plague of Laicism and its Forms of Expression) (1932).


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