Portal:Catholicism/Biography Archive/June 2007

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Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen (March 16, 1878 – March 22, 1946) was a German count, Bishop of Münster, and Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. An outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, he issued forceful, public denunciations of the Third Reich's euthanasia programs and persecution of the Catholic Church, making him one of the most visible and unrelenting internal voices of dissent against the Nazis.

He was also known as a German patriot and a fierce anti-Communist who favoured the battle at the Eastern Front against Stalin's regime in the Soviet Union.

Von Galen, further, suffered virtual house arrest from 1941 until the end of the war. The numerically most significant waves of deportations of Jews did not start until late 1942, reaching its height only by the middle or even the end of 1944.

In 1945 he told international press that although he and others had been opposed to Nazism, it was their duty to be loyal to their fatherland and thus consider the Allies their enemies.^[1]