The Nazi War Against The Catholic Church. Persecution In Europe Part 8.

PASTORAL LETTER OF MARCH 22, 1942

On March 22, 1942, the Catholic Bishops of Germany once again felt compelled to issue a pastoral letter.

This document not only ranks with the famous Fulda pastoral letters of previous years, but it also points out with forthrightness and clarity how the guarantees given by Hitler in the Concordat have been systematically violated. Since this pastoral letter serves to bring the situation of the Catholic Church under the Nazi regime up to date, it is here reprinted in full,

I

Dear Diocesans:

For years a war has raged in our fatherland against Christianity and Church, and has never been conducted with such bitterness. Repeatedly the German bishops have asked the Reich Government to discontinue this fatal struggle; but, unfortunately, our appeals and endeavors were without success.

Even in wartime, when solidarity has always been a matter of course, the fight continues; nay, increases in sharpness and bitterness and lies like a tremendous incubus on the German people, of whom at the last census 95 per cent—in Bavaria even 98 per cent—have professed to be Christians.

Therefore, the German bishops have considered it their duty toward Church and people to put an end to this internal war by a public declaration and an effective order. As we know that the faithful expect their bishops to do everything to protect belief and conscience, to re-establish the peace of religion and Church and to ease their souls from severe pressure, we feel obliged to make public the most important points of our memoir (to the Reich Government).

In the Concordat of July 20, 1933, the Reich Government granted the Catholic Church state protection for the free development of its functions. Actually, these grants have not been kept. Christianity and the Catholic Church have been denied state protection and are being fought and fettered through measures and organs of party and State.

1. Promised and pledged was "the liberty of creed and worship of the Catholic religion." In truth, pressure is frequently used on those who depend on State or party positions to force them to conceal or deny their Catholic religion or to compel them to abandon the Church. Through numerous ordinances and laws open worship of the Catholic religion has been restricted to such a degree that it has disappeared almost entirely from public life. It appears as if the sign of Christ, which in the year 312 was gloriously carried from the catacombs, is to be driven back to the catacombs.

Even worship within the houses of God is frequently restricted and oppressed. Quite a number of places of worship, especially in the Ostmark, in the newly conquered territories, but also in the old Reich, have been closed by force and even used for profane purposes. Services in rented rooms have been prohibited despite urgent necessities. Purchases of lots for the construction of new churches is being rendered impossible.

From time to time religious instruction for children and juveniles has been prohibited even in church-owned premises and has been punished.

Religious care in hospitals has been most severely restricted through new laws.

2. Catholic parents and the Catholic Church have the natural and divine right to educate their children religiously according to the principles of the Christian faith and ethical law and in conformity with their own consciences. Through concordats, the influence of the Christian churches on school and education has been expressly granted.

Actually, however, the rights of parents and Church are being more and more restricted and have become ineffective. Juveniles in State youth organizations, in hostels and labor camps, often even in schools and country homes for evacuated children are being influenced in an anti-Christian manner and kept away from religious services and celebrations. In the new State institutions (such as teachers' training schools, all-political educational homes, etc.) any Christian and religious influence is absolutely impossible.

3. The Catholic Church and its priests have the right and the duty to pronounce and defend, freely and unrestricted, orally and in writing, the creeds and doctrines of the Christian religion.
 
The clergy, by agreement, has been granted State projection for the execution of its duties.

In reality, Catholic priests are watched constantly and suspiciously in their teaching and pastoral duties; priests, without proof of any guilt, are banned from their dioceses and homes, and even deprived of their freedom and punished for having fulfilled their priestly duties truthfully and scrupulously.

It is unbearable that clergymen are being punished with expulsion from the country or internment in a concentration camp without court procedure and any contact with the clergy, when approach to the bishopric could have resulted in the explanation of misunderstandings or the prevention of mistakes.

The holding of religious services and exercises is made almost impossible; the religious press has been destroyed almost entirely; the reprinting of religious books, even catechisms, school Bibles and diocesan prayer books is not permitted, while anti-Christian writings may be printed and distributed in mass circulation.

4. It is consented upon and granted by agreement : "Orders and religious societies are not subjected by the State to any specific restriction regarding their pastoral, educational, medical and relief work, conduct of their affairs and administration of their estates."

In fact, the Catholic orders have been expelled from schools almost entirely and are being curtailed in their other activities on an ever-increasing scale. A large part of their property and their institutions have been taken away from them and many are destined to perish because of the law prohibiting able-bodied men to work for them. Consequently, the German people will be in future without the pastoral services of the priests of the orders and without the sacrificing services of their nuns.

5. It has been promised and granted: "Within the limitations of the law, the clergy has the sole right to erect, conduct and administer the seminaries for priests as well as church refectories."

In truth, not only the Church refectories for students have been largely destroyed or taken

but even seminaries for priests have been confiscated and deprived of their clerical status. This is in conformity with the purpose of those who wish to deprive the Catholic priesthood of successors. 

II

We emphasize that before the authorities we not only stand up for religious and clerical rights but likewise for the human rights bestowed by God on mankind. Every honest human being is interested in the respect and preservation of these rights; without them the entire Western culture mast break down.

1. Every man has the natural right for personal freedom within the boundaries designated by obedience to God, consideration of his fellow man and the common good and the just laws of the civil authorities.

We German Bishops protest against every disregard of personal freedom. We demand juridical proof of all sentences and release of all fellow citizens who have been deprived of their liberty without proof of an act punishable with imprisonment.

2. Every man has the natural right to life and the goods essential for living. The living God, the Creator of all life, is sole master over life and death.

With deep horror Christian Germans have learned that, by order of the State authorities, numerous insane persons, entrusted to asylums and institutions, were destroyed as so-called "unproductive citizens." At present a large-scale campaign is being made for the killing of incurables through a film recommended by the authorities and designed to calm the conscience through appeals to pity.

We German Bishops shall not cease to protest against the killing of innocent persons. Nobody's life is safe unless the Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," is observed.

3. Every man has the natural right to property and the use of his lawfully acquired property and to protection by the State of private property against willful interference. Nevertheless, in past years many Church possessions and especially houses of religious orders, have been taken away by force from their lawful owners and used for other purposes. Even places of worship have been confiscated and desecrated.

We Bishops, in the name of the Catholic people, from whom come the members of our orders, protest against this violation of natural property rights and demand the return of the unlawfully confiscated and in many cases sequestrated property. We protest against such willful acts for the sake of the common good and as defenders of the fundamental social order willed by God. For what happens today to Church property may tomorrow happen to any lawful property.

4. Every man has the natural rights to the protection of his honor against lie and slander.

On the front and in the homeland faithful Christians fulfill their patriotic duties like all their fellow citizens. Yet Catholic priests and laymen are suspiciously watched, secretly suspected, nay, publicly branded as traitors and national enemies, just because they stand up for the freedom of the Church and, the truth of the Catholic faith.

Catholics of the religious orders have fulfilled their duty heroically in the field, at home and in war, a fact which has been frequently acknowledged through the bestowing of war decorations. In spite of this, many have been deprived of their monastic homes.

We Bishops protest against such violations of truth and justice and demand effective, honorable protection for all citizens, including faithful Catholics and members of Catholic orders.

For months, regardless of war misery, an anti-Christian wave of propaganda, fostered by party meetings and party pamphlets, has been carried through the country with the clearly noticeable, even outspoken, aim to suffocate the vigor of the Catholic Church in German lands.

If possible, they wish to destroy Christianity in Germany during the war, before the soldiers, whose Christian faith gives them the strength for heroic battles and sacrifices, return home. The vast majority of the German people, whose deepest feelings are hurt by such attacks on Christianity, justly expect the immediate and frank rectification of the Reich Government of the unjust oppression and hated struggle against Christianity and the Church.

Dear Diocesans: We Bishops have informed you of our grave worries and ardent endeavor for inner peace in our German nation. We call upon you, with the devotion we have always shown you, to support our efforts through your prayer and your unshakable faith, and to repulse decisively and vigorously all attempts to make you waver.

We wish to prove through our attitude that we long for nothing but internal peace, and esteem nothing as highly and faithfully as our sacred creed, which we shall defend against all attacks. Decisively and firmly we refuse the suggestion that we should prove our patriotic faith through faithlessness toward Christ and our Church.

We remain eternally true to our Fatherland just because, and at any price, we remain faithful to our Saviour and our Church. God bless our country and our holy Church. God give us an honest, happy, lasting peace to the Church and the Fatherland.

The German Bishops.

The above pastoral letter is to be read in all churches during the services on Passion Sunday, March 22, 1942.

Responsible for distribution and edition: The Bishop of Wuerzburg, Matthias Ehrenfried.

On May 8, 1942, it was published in the uncensored press of the free world that Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber had again raised his voice against Nazi persecutions of the Catholic Church in an eleven-point indictment of the situation in Germany which he sent to the Holy See.

Cardinal von Faulhaber's charges, in a condensed form, were as follows:

1. That a "veritable war against Christianity" is being waged in Germany.

2. That the Church is the victim of an elaborate system of "anti-Christian espionage."

3. That moral "blackmail" is being applied to faithful Catholics in an effort to lessen their church attendance, and to the Church itself in an attempt to extort greater contributions to the Nazi party funds.

4. That intensified propaganda efforts are being made among the lower paid workers to get them to disavow the Church.

5. That the Church is being accused of being a "super-national organization" and that "loyal Germans" are asked how they can reconcile their duties to the State with those to the Church.

6. That violence is often employed in the "catechism" of a "doubtful" German who must "develop a conscience of his nationality" or "suffer the consequences."

7. That "grave measures" have been taken in primary and secondary schools to prevent religious instruction.

8. That under the pretext of lack of paper, publication of religious material has been forbidden, while on the other hand the number and size of publications attacking the Church has "increased beyond measure."

9. That young people have been forbidden to attend evening religious festivals on the ground that they "prevent their getting enough sleep," yet "attendance at party functions, which often last well past midnight, is obligatory."

10. That church organizations have been prevented from acquiring land on which to build religious structures, and that in many cases land already in possession of the Church has been sequestered without indemnification.

11. That Church property, such as bronze bells and even ritual vessels of immense real or intrinsic value have been sequestered without warning and indemnification.

The Cardinal closed with a prayer that "the Church stand together for the fight of its existence. Today it is a question of life or death for Christianity, for in its blind rage against religion the Nazi 'faith' does not or cannot distinguish between Protestantism and Catholicism."

THE POPE

"Let us be infinitely grateful to Our Lord," said Pius XII in his Christmas Eve message of 1940, "that in this, our own day, our church is not lacking in such elect saintly courageous souls, found alike in the ranks of the clergy and the laity, who give strong evidence of heroism, generally overlooked by the world, and of unwavering fidelity ...

"Indispensable prerequisites for the search for a new order are:

"1. Triumph over hate, which is today a cause of division among peoples; a renunciation therefore of the systems and practices from which hate constantly receives added nourishment.

"2. Triumph over mistrust, which bears down as a depressing weight on international law and renders impossible the realization of any sincere agreement.

"3. Triumph over the distressing principles that utility is a basis of law and right and that might makes right; a principle which makes all international relations labile.

"4. Triumph over those germs of conflict which consist in two-sided differences in the field of world economy, hence progressive action, balanced by corresponding degrees to arrive at arrangements which would give to every State the medium necessary for insuring the proper standard of living for its own citizens of every rank.

"5. Triumph over the spirit of cold egoism which, fearless in its might, easily leads to violation not only of the honor and sovereignty of States, but the righteous, wholesome and disciplined liberty of citizens as well."

In November 1941, the Vatican radio broadcast in German a letter by the Pope, which said: "If people arise and allege that they are the bearers of a new belief or a new gospel which is not Christ's gospel, and if they make the Holy Church and its Head, the Pope, the target of unheard-of attacks; if they attempt to create an artificial and unreal contradiction between loyalty to God and loyalty to the Fatherland—then the hour has come when the bishops must raise their voices because of their vows. It is the duty of the bishops to repeat without fear the apostle's words: 'We must obey God rather than men!' "
At the close of the year 1941, the Holy Father said, in his Christmas Eve broadcast to the world:
 
"In its place (the place of the true faith) they have fashioned Christianity to their liking a new idol which does not save, which is not opposed to the passions of carnal desires nor to the greed for gold and silver which fascinates, nor to the pride of life; a new religion without a soul or a soul without .a religion, a mask of dead Christianity without the spirit of Christ. And they have proclaimed that Christianity has failed in its mission!"

Original from UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

The Nazi War Against The Catholic Church. Persecution In Europe Part 7.

On November 8, 1938, a tall, rugged man, dressed in episcopal robes, came out of a Westphalian church where he had been administering the sacrament of Confirmation. Blessing the throngs as he passed, he circulated slowly through the crowd of people gathered outside the church.

A Nazi police officer, in charge of a squad of twenty men, ordered the bishop to stop.

The bishop turned and gazed at the police officer. "Never before in any diocese," the bishop said quietly, "has my right to do such things been questioned, and I don't propose that it should start now."

"Nevertheless I forbid you," the police officer shouted.

The bishop turned and gave the police officer a level stare, then continued his slow benedictory passage through the throng. The police officer did not say another word.

The man who outcountenanced the representative of the Nazi police force was Clemens August Count von Galen—a churchman of such transcendant courage, that he is as much beloved by the whole of Catholic Germany as he is respected and even feared by the members of the Nazi hierarchy.

Bishop von Galen was born on March 16, 1878, at Dinklage, Oldenburg. He came of a family which had given many eminent ecclesiastics to Germany. As far back as 1650 a Bishop of Muns-ter had been a von Galen, Christopher by name, and a man who had been instrumental in restoring peace to the countryside after the Thirty Years War. The first piece of social legislation presented to the Reichstag had been introduced in 1877 by another relative, Ferdinand von Galen.

Clemens August von Galen was ordained a priest in 1904, and became a bishop in 1933, having been elevated to that office by the late Cardinal Schulte, himself the first German prelate to have become aware of the anti-religious menace of the National Socialist movement.

Bishop von Galen had not been wearing his newly-acquired episcopal robes a year when, with a fearlessness which was completely characteristic of him, he began speaking out forthrightly against Nazi paganism.
 
Indeed Bishop von Galen has gone even farther than that in the freedom of his speech. Without the slightest regard for his personal safety, he has not hesitated to write or telegraph Hitler direct whenever he has violated the Concordat. The Bishop has gone in person to the highest authorities in the land in order to lodge a long series of vigorous protests against the persecution of the Catholic Church, and, risking his very life, he has publicly stigmatized the Gestapo and its chief, Himmler, as murderers and despots.

For 550 years a great religious procession had been held in Munster to celebrate the salvation of that city from fire and plague. In 1936, for the first time in all those centuries, the procession was interfered with by secular authorities. Nazi police barricaded a certain section of the cathedral square through which the Bishop would have to pass after the services. Hearing of this, Bishop von Galen mounted to his pulpit and said: "If anyone thinks that physical force, ropes and police measures are going to separate me from you, or you from me, he is making a serious mistake." The bishop's words were so moving that the congregation broke into spontaneous applause.

But Bishop von Galen's words could be as wittily barbed as they were stirring. One day he was delivering a sermon in his cathedral against the State's interference with family life and the education of youth. A stormtrooper interrupted with typical Nazi disregard of the proprieties.

"By what right," he shouted truculently, "do you, a celibate, talk about the problems of marriage and children?"

Bishop von Galen fixed the Nazi with a withering stare, struck the pulpit a resounding blow, and instantly replied: ''Never will I tolerate in this cathedral any reflection on our beloved Fuhrer."

The Bishop of Munster's reputation for courage and integrity reached international proportions a few months ago when news filtered through the German censorship that he had delivered three "amazingly bold" sermons in the summer of 1941 denouncing Nazi principles.

The first of these was uttered following upon a big British air raid on Munster. The result of von Galen's attack was a fresh wave of anti-Catholic repression by the Nazis which included the dissolution of religious orders in Westphalia and the imprisonment of many prominent Catholics.

Nevertheless, the Bishop promptly returned to the attack with a sermon in which he said that the city had suffered from "our opponents in war/' and secondly from an "inner enemy" which "spiritually was most dangerous. No German citizen," he continued, "has any longer any security, and justice has come to be a thing of the past."

The following Sunday Bishop von Galen again spoke from the pulpit. He anathematized injustices within the Reich which "cried aloud to heaven for redress." He said there was no longer any law in Germany, but he asserted that the resistance of Christians was like a strong anvil, and that all hammers would break if the anvil remained sufficiently strong.

Bishop von Galen has been equally undaunted in his denunciation of Nazi racial theories and their sinister application in the killing of invalids and the insane.

"In the diocese," the Bishop stated, "a considerable number of persons in asylums had been taken away and then their relatives had been informed that they have died of pneumonia." He said that everyone knew that these people had been murdered. In his condemnation of these eugenic killings, von Galen has had the unqualified support of the Archbishop of Worms and of Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber.

"People speak of 'blood and soil' " Bishop von Galen said. "If these words have any significance whatever, I, more than anyone, should have the right to invoke this doctrine, for my ancestors have been established in this country for over 500 years. Here in this Rhenish land, we are on our own soil and have no need of prophets who come from abroad." The Bishop was referring to the so-called "philosopher" of National Socialism, Alfred Rosenberg, who was born in Russia.

Reports emanating from Munster state that in November, 1941, a whole regiment in that city marched to the office of the local Gauleiter upon learning that Bishop von Galen had been prohibited from preaching. The soldiers not only demanded that the ban be rescinded, but formed themselves into a bodyguard for the Bishop and attacked a Gestapo agent who had been assigned to watch the episcopal palace.

In the fall of 1941, Bishop von Galen addressed a letter to Nazi leaders from which the following excerpt is quoted:

"In the absence of the intervention of the officers responsible for the protection of the legal order, I feel myself called upon and obliged as the responsible Bishop of 2,000,000 German Catholics regardless of the consequences to me personally, to raise my voice loudly accusing the inner enemy who is ruining the people and the Fatherland, warningly calling the Government back from a path which must lead to destruction."
Bishop von Galen is now reported to be under arrest.

Finally, in October 1941, Alfred Rosenberg, the accredited anti-Christian prophet of National Socialism, issued in a thirty-point program the design for the state religion of the New Germany. This document is of such interest that we quote it in full:

 The National Reich Church

1. The National Reich Church (Na-tionale Reichskirche) claims with all decisiveness the sole right and sole power over all churches within the German Reich's boundaries; declares them as National Reich Churches of Germany.

2. The German people must not serve National Reich Church, but National Reich Church serves exclusively one doctrine: race and folk.

3. The activities of National Reich Church are limited to territorial boundaries of the Reich and its "colonies."

4. "National Reich Church forces no German to belong," but "National Reich Church is ready to do all in its power to gain possession of the last German soul." Furthermore National Reich Church will not tolerate other churches or churchlike organizations and clubs, especially those with international connections or government.

5. National Reich Church is determined unswervingly and by all means to annihilate Christian faith, which "though foreign to our being and character was imported to Germany in the tragic year 800."

6. No fundamental changes in the construction of the present churches will be undertaken for "they represent German folk property, German kuJtur and are part of the historical process and development of our people. They must be evaluated and preserved as German folk property."

7. There will be no scribes (Schrift-gelehrter), pastors, chaplains or clergy in National Reich Church, and only National Reich orators are to have the right to speak.

8. National Reich Church ceremonies will take place on Saturday evenings only with festive illuminations.

9. In National Reich Church, German men, women and boys and girls will unitedly pledge themselves to the Nazi conception of God.

10. National Reich Church will unswervingly work toward inevitable unification with the state. National Reich Church must subordinate itself to the State as a serving member. On this basis National Reich Church demands the immediate transference of all property of all churches and confessions to the State. It also forbids future churches to obtain possession of the smallest dot of German land or that such be given them. For "it is not the church which conquers and cultivates land and soil but exclusively the German state and the German people."

11. National Reich Church orators may never be "those who today with cunning and treachery emphasize the absolute necessity of the maintenance of Christian teachings in Germany; for they lie not only to themselves but to the German people, merely for the sake of a job and their bread."

12. National Reich Church orators are to be state officials under the law for state officials.

13. National Reich Church demands that printing and delivery of the Bible immediately be stopped in Germany as well as the further appearance of Sunday papers, writings, lectures and books with churchly content.
 
14. National Reich Church will guard with the utmost strictness against importation of Bibles and Christian religious literature into Germany.

15. National Reich Church declares that henceforth "our people's greatest document and book will be our Fiihrer's Mein Kampf. National Reich Church is conscious that this book contains not only the greatest but, much more, the purest and truest ethics for the present and future life of our people."

16. National Reich Church "unswervingly dedicates itself with all its strength to make the book Mein Kampf popular and cause every German to guide his life according to this book."

17. National Reich Church demands that the number of pages and the contents of the book in the future, in whatever form it may appear, correspond to the present popular edition.

18. National Reich Church removes from all altars the crucifix, the Bible, and all holy pictures.

19. On the altars of National Reich Church "will be our all-holy book Mein Kampf and on its left a sword consecrating our German people to the same token of God."

20. National Reich Church orators must explain the book during National Reich Church ceremonies according to their conscience and abilities.

21. National Reich Church recognizes no forgiveness of sins. National Reich Church represents the viewpoint, and will repeatedly profess it, that sin is inexorably avenged by the iron and unsub-vertable laws of nature.

22. National Reich Church rejects the baptism of German children both with water and the ritual of the Holy Ghost.

23. Parents of a newborn German child must go before the altar only to repeat a German vow in the following words:

For the man, "I swear by God this holy oath that I, the father of this child, and my wife are probably of Aryan descent. As a father, I swear to rear the child in the German spirit for the German people."

For the woman, "I swear by God this holy oath that I (name) bore my husband this child, that my husband, the father of this child, and I, the mother, are probably of Aryan descent. As a mother, I swear to raise this child in the German spirit for the German people." Only on the basis of this German vow is a diploma to be delivered for a new citizen.
 
24. National Reich Church abolishes confirmation, confirmation instruction, communion and communion instruction.

Places of education are the family, the school, the German Jungvolk, and the Hitler Youth Bund for German girls.

25. In order to make graduation exercises especially ceremonious, National Reich Church is placed at the disposal of the various youth organizations on State Youth Day, the Friday before Easter. On this day only the leaders of these organizations will speak.

26. The marriage of German men and women is to take place with a repetition of the oath of loyalty with the right hand on the sword. In National Reich Church no act may take place in an undignified kneeling position.

27. National Reich Church declares the tenth day before Pentecost to be the day of the German family.

28. National Reich Church rejects the customary penitence on Prayer Day and demands that it be transferred to the anniversary of the founding of National Reich Church.

29. National Reich Church will not tolerate the existence of religious symbols.

30. On the day of the foundation all of the new National Reich churches, cathedrals and chapels within the Reich and its colonial boundaries will remove the cross of Christ which will be replaced by the hakenkreuz as the "only unconquerable symbol of Germany."

Original from UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

The Nazi War Against The Catholic Church. Persecution In Europe Part 6.

FRANCE

On July 26, 1940, the palace of Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, was searched by the Gestapo "to seek evidence of collusion between the late Cardinal Verdier and the Jews." The Cardinal was not allowed to communicate with anyone until August 1.

On the same day the home of Cardinal Beaudrillart, rector of the Catholic Institute was searched, as were the offices of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, and the offices of several youth groups.

The following day, strongly indicating concerted action which amounted to a planned campaign, the Episcopal Palace at Lille was searched for five hours. When Cardinal Lienart protested that the search warrant was unsigned, the Nazi soldiers said: "We have the right and we have the arms.

On September 9, the Bishop of Quimper was placed under house arrest for denouncing German plans to remake Brittany.

From the Vatican radio there came a German language broadcast denouncing the treatment of the Church in Alsace-Lorraine under the Nazi regime. Pointing out that three-quarters of the territory's 2,000,000 inhabitants are Catholics, the announcer declared that the National Socialist Party is now attempting to penetrate the country ideologically. Schools have already been reoriented in the Nazi ideology. Catholic schools have been disbanded, and priests active in educational work have been dismissed from their posts. The Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls have been established throughout the territory, and Alsace-Lorraine children have been sent to Germany for ideological training.

Alsatian Catholics, the Vatican radio charged, are being cut off and cannot establish contact with Catholics in older Germany. Colleges and missionary schools have been shut down.

The Bishop of Strasbourg has not been allowed to return to his diocese from unoccupied France and the Bishop of Metz has been expelled.

The Strasbourg Cathedral has been closed to Catholic services.

On October 11, Mgr. Ballard, Archbishop of Besangon, was sentenced to jail "for attempting to turn the people against the Germans" because he had tried to collect food for 25,000 French war prisoners. At the same time, Vicar-General Galan was sentenced to nine days in jail for reading a message to raise the people's spirits.

On October 18, the Vatican radio said that a speech by Josef Buerckel, Nazi administrator in Lorraine, portends the closing of Catholic private and confessional schools in occupied France.

On December 12, the Catholic diocese of Metz was dissolved "for political reasons," by order of Buerckel, gauleiter for the newly-founded province of "Westmark."

In March 1941, the Vatican radio described Catholics in Alsace-Lorraine as being "tried in the fire of a cruel persecution." German oppressive measures have included the closing of Catholic schools, the exclusion of nuns from teaching, the setting up of Hitler Youth organizations, and the deportation of many Alsace-Lorraine youth to Germany. The Germans used the Paris radio to accuse the Vichy government of reactionary clericism.

The strongest criticism was levelled against the educational system of the Jesuits which was described as "extremely dangerous for the mentality of young Frenchmen."

On April 4, the Vatican radio again charged that: "Former Catholic teachers must now give instruction in accordance with National Socialist programs; that membership in Hitler Youth organizations is obligatory for boys and girls over 10; that religious seminaries are being closed, all Catholic organizations are being dissolved, and that Catholic newspapers are being suppressed in Alsace-Lorraine; and that to the end of December of the preceding year, 20,000 persons had been expelled from Alsace, including 60 priests."

On September 2, a United Press dispatch states that many Catholic priests in France had been arrested and jailed, or put in concentration camps. Eighteen had been jailed in Strasbourg because "they made anti-German statements," and sixty others had been sent to a concentration camp in the North Moselle region.

When Marshal Petain was attacked by the magazine Esprit for his anti-semitic laws, the paper was suppressed.

The Gestapo ousted nuns from their institutions and, in many cases, forced them to go to Germany.

A typical Nazi trick was to distribute ration cards on Sundays, at the precise time when Mass was being celebrated.

Near Drieuze, the Nazis locked a church when a funeral procession approached it, announcing that burials must take place without religious services. At Chateau Salins, the Gestapo tried to prevent services by locking the church door.

Sunday activities, including morning excursions for children, were devised by the Nazis to prevent Catholics from attending Mass. Children were also enticed away from their religious obligations by free Sunday motion picture shows.

On June 26, 1941, the Archbishops and Bishops of Germany, assembled at Fulda—Fulda, Fortress of St. Boniface—issued a Pastoral Letter, which was appointed to be read from all pulpits on July 6. A document of high courage, it merits the closest study. The most significant passages are quoted herewith:

Excerpts from the Fulda Pastoral Letter

Dear Members of the Dioceses: Not only the war but contemporary events which touch the religious field lead you to ask for a word of enlightenment and encouragement from your Bishops. In answering your call and your expectation, we are fulfilling our superior pastoral duty. We want you to know that your Bishops are at their posts in these upsetting times; that they stood up for and will continue to stand up for the interests of our holy religion in complete unanimity with all permissible and possible means. Again and again have the Bishops brought their justified claims and complaints before the proper authorities. Be re-assured that the Bishops speak as openly as their holy duty as teachers of the creed and as defenders of the rights of the church asks them to do. Through this pastoral declaration the Bishops want to help you to see the real situation of the church in the light of your creed and enable you to judge it. We want to spare you an ominous spiritual conflict which might make it difficult for you to do your duty gladly. We exhort you to strive for a quiet and decided attitude which results from a true belief and strong confidence in God. The events we speak of are all well-known to you and the object of yours and our deepest concern. They are the restrictions and limitations which have been put upon the free preaching of our creed and upon our church life. Our church is God's visible empire, willed by God on this earth into which man enters through baptism and which must and will lead him in complete independence to a supernatural destination.
 The church has, therefore, the right and the duty derived from God of religious and moral instruction and education of the youth from childhood onwards and of the free preaching of The Gospel of Christ in the degree which the church itself thinks necessary.  The church has the right to freedom of service and the right to establish a calendar of religious festivals which is regulated according to the religious needs of the faithful.  The church is and will be the guardian of moral laws given by God and it will never abide that which God has forbidden. In this way the church saves for its people the firm foundation of moral strength and social order.  The church has the right and the duty given to it by its divine foundationto practise charity.  The credit for fulfilling this task and for having cared for the well-being of the people is particularly due to the religious orders and societies.  They have always possessed the love and esteem of the Catholic people in a high degree.  In all these fields, the church has found great obstacles during the past few years and particularly during the last months ...
Dear Members of the Diocese the fact cannot be denied that at present, either caused by the emergency or without reason, a very far-reaching restriction of the practice of our holy religion exists, but that must not discourage us or make us negligent. Every time of hardship is a test and confirmation of our religious faithfulness. Here we wish to point out some duties which are particularly brought upon us by these times.

There are no more religious Sunday papers and bulletins of your dioceses which, up to now, preached the creed and strengthened the moral powers of the family. As long as they are not published you parents must endeavour to replace what you and your children miss in printed religious instructions by regular attendance at church and by supporting the pastoral work in your community. More than ever it is the duty of you parents to concern yourselves about the books which get into the hands of your children and to provide at least a few good books in the home library for the family so that they could be read together.

With deep sorrow we heard the news that the Catholic kindergarten has now been abolished in large districts of the Reich in spite of the protests of the Bishops. They were treated and love by the Catholic people as a supplement of religious education. The Catholic schools have already been taken from us. Religious teaching in the schools has been cut down or completely dropped. For you parents have the strict commandment to become the religious teacher of your children.
Our priests will glady give you directions to fulfil this first and finest duty of a parent. It is up to you to follow their proposals conscientiously. The more difficult it becomes to attend a service in church regularly, the more the house of every Christian family becomes a small house of God. In the sanctity of the Christian family, it must become a sacred custom for everyone to gather as often as possible before the crucifix in order to offer a common prayer and to think of the anxieties of the church and of the people and of the ecclesiastical and worldly authorities. Pray also for your beloved dead, for the sick; pray for husbands, fathers and sons who are fighting in the midst of war. The creed and the virtue of your children must be the object of your fervent prayers—particularly so if the circumstances have brought about a local separation from your children and if they cannot have religious service and religious care. If they are far away, you must not only remind them in your letters of their duty towards God but your prayers for them must be like the holy angels of God and give them guidance.

Dear Members of the Dioceses: We Bishops meeting at the tomb of Saint Boniface whose life work it was to bring the German people to our Master and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and who died the glorious death of a martyr in fulfilling this task, feel an even greater sorrow about the existence of powers working to dissolve the blessed union between Christ and the German people than we do about the incidents mentioned above. The existence of Christianity in Germany is at stake. Quite lately a book has been distributed in Germany in hundreds of thousands of copies which contains the assertion that we Germans had to chose between Christ and the German people.

Dear Members of the Dioceses: With burning indignation we German Catholics refuse to make such a choice. We love our German people and we serve them, if necessary, with our lives, but at the same time we live and die for Jesus Christ and want to be united with Christ in time and eternity. We are convinced that we serve our beloved German people best when we preserve Christ and His Gospel for them. It would mean a terrible impoverishment of our people if we relinquished those Christian principles which for more than a thousand years have been the foundation of its spiritual and moral culture. Out of the Christian creed grew for our people that noble conception of human personality which asks the individual to fit himself into the order of the human community ready for sacrifices, but which on the other hand preserves for every individual his God-given rights and duties. God willed that they should be respected by all living creatures. If we care for the preservation of Christianity in our people, then we must fight and stand up for the personality and dignity of the German man.

Before all things we hold firm to Jesus Christ because he is "the son of God who came into this world that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly" (John 10-10); "because there is no other name given to man under Heaven by which he can be blessed" (Acts 4, 7 and 12). At the request to leave Christ we answer like Saint Peter, "Master, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou are that Christ, the son of the living God." (John 6-69).

As we are faithful to Christ nothing can separate us from His holy church which He has founded on the rock foundation of the pontificate. With a representative of Christ on earth, our Holy Father, we are united in filial love.

Original from UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

The Nazi War Against The Catholic Church. Persecution In Europe Part 5.

Polish priests and civilians in Bydgoszcz's Old Market Square, 9 September 1939.

GERMANY

In March, 1941, the Vatican radio broadcast: "The religious situation in Germany is pathetic. All young men who feel that their vocation is to take Holy Orders must forego this desire. The number of monasteries and convents which have been dissolved has become even larger. The development and maintenance of the Christian life has been rendered difficult. All that remains of the once great Catholic press in Germany are a few parish magazines.

"The threat of a national religion is looming increasingly over all religious life. This national religion is based solely on the Fuhrer's will."

In April the Vatican radio quoted a pastoral letter by Mgr. Gruber, Archbishop of Freiburg-im-Breisgau, as follows: "Isolation and exclusion of convinced Christians is going on. The new teachings are an abuse of God and religion." In a later broadcast, the Vatican radio said that Catholicism is being dismissed by the Nazis as "a myth only suitable for the Mediterranean."

On July 26, 1941, in a letter to Reichminister Lammers, Bishop von Galen, famous for his spirited resistance to Nazi persecution, wrote: "The Secret Police has continued to rob the property of highly respected German men and women merely because they belonged to Catholic orders."

On October 21, the Catholic Newscable quoted an editorial in the London Tablet as follows:

"Inside the Reich the leaders of the Church have had for several years no illusions about the anti-Christian nature of the Nazi movement. The German bishops have shown a fortitude for which we salute and honor them."

A Bavarian bishop's letter, quoted in Ostschweiz, says: "A wave of indignation is sweeping over Bavaria since prayers have been recently forbidden in all schools, and the cross is being removed from schools. The children of German soldiers are forbidden to pray for their fathers."

SCANDINAVIA

On April 9, 1940, the Nazis overran Denmark and began their invasion of Norway. The history of the persecution of the Christian religion in these countries does not technically have a large place in this booklet, which is concerned exclusively with the present German Government's conspiracy and assault against the Catholic Church. Suffice it to say that the anti-religious tyranny practised by Hitler's regime in Scandinavia parallels in numerous instances, and clearly in overall design, the anti-religious campaigns conducted in every country in which he has been about to exercise his will.

THE LOW COUNTRIES

When, on May 10, 1940, the German armies entered the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, a semi-official Vatican source stated that "The Holy See is deeply impressed and pained by the spreading of the war to the Netherlands and Belgium . . . Particular cause of sorrow is the violation of Belgium's neutrality which had the unhappy precedent of 1914."

The following day Pope Pius XII sent three messages:

To King Leopold of Belgium: "In a moment when, for the second time against its will and right, the Belgium people sees its territory exposed to the cruelties of war, We, being profoundly moved, send to Your Majesty and to the entire nation so beloved by Us assurance of Our paternal affection and, while praying to the All-Powerful God that this stern trial may end with the restoration of the full liberty and independence of Belgium, We send Your Majesty and your people Our apostolic blessing with all Our heart."

To Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands: "Having learned with deep emotion that Your Majesty's efforts in behalf of peace have not succeeded in preserving your noble people from becoming a theatre of war, contrary to its will and its right, We pray God, Supreme Judge of the destinies of nations, to hasten the restoration of justice and liberty with His all-powerful assistance."

And to the Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg: "In this sad moment, when the people of Luxembourg despite its love of peace is enveloped by wars and torment, Our heart goes out to it and while We implore its celestial patroness to give aid and protection that it may live in liberty and independence, We send Your Royal Highness and your faithful subjects Our apostolic blessing."

THE NETHERLANDS

On September 2, 1940, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Nazi Commissioner for the Netherlands, ordered a purge of priests and monks of the Catholic Church who refused to advocate National Socialism.

On November 27, the Nazis invaded the headquarters of the Society of Jesus at the Hague, as well as the offices of the Bishop of Roermond. It was reported that Father Kayzer, S. J., director of the College of Philosophy at Nymegen, had been interned.

At the end of January, 1941, the Essener National Zeitung, Hermann Goering's newspaper, responded with threats to a Pastoral Letter of the Dutch Bishops, issued on the 26th of that month. "We guarantee," said the National Zeitung, "that Hitler's party is strong enough to manage the Catholic Church in the Netherlands."

The following are repressive measures commonly practised in the Netherlands: Gestapo agents attend Church services. Storm troopers march through the streets on Sundays to prevent Catholics from going to Mass. The independent existence of the Catholic Youth Movement was ended long ago. Priests are arrested and religious publications suppressed and suspended, including De Maasbode, largest Catholic daily in the Netherlands.

On March 28, 1941, Universe, a Catholic weekly published in London, reported that some four-thousand five-hundred clerics in the Netherlands were about to be ejected from their positions in the Catholic educational system. The Nazis then decreed that all priests who headed Catholic schools must resign by May 1, 1941, to be replaced by men "trained in political life."

According to the Essener National Zeitung, Archbishop de Jongh was fined for his refusal to proclaim the Nazi invasion of Russia to be a "religious crusade" against Bolshevism.

In August 1941, Seyss-Inquart installed a Dutch Nazi as commissioner of the Roman Catholic Workers' Union. A pastoral letter branded this act as the abolition of "a movement of 200,000 members with a record of much good accomplished." The Archbishop of Utrecht requested that Catholics no longer remain members of the Union.

On June 21, 1941, the American Press Review reported that the Catholic paper Ons Noorden had been banned by the Nazis, on the ground that "the church had ridiculous concepts of loving God."

BELGIUM

The extent of persecution in Belgium is indicated by the repeated appeals of Joseph Ernest Cardinal van Roey to his people to stand firm in the face of adversity. Specific case histories have not come into the outer world in comparable quantity to the reports of Cardinal Hlond on Poland. Yet sufficient is known to demonstrate that the Catholics of Belgium are sharing with Christians of other conquered lands the Nazi oppression of their faith.

With the honesty and courage of his great tradition, Cardinal van Roey has written a refutation of Nazi racial doctrines, and a most significant discussion of the impossibility for good Catholics of collaboration with the Nazi tyranny. We reproduce a few lines of His Eminence's dialogue on the latter subject:

A.. After all, isn't it true that the Church can adapt herself to any regime?

R. No. Never can she adapt herself to governments that oppress the rights of conscience and persecute the Catholic Church. On the contrary, Catholics are obliged to collaborate with those who seek to impede the imposition of such a r6gime. Collaboration with those who favor its introduction amongst us is forbidden.

A. The Nazi regime isn't so bad. A little restriction will not harm the Church. Hasn't the Church, in fact, exceeded her rights?

R. No. The Church is not limited to services and sacrifices. Not only oral teaching but also the written word, and especially the press, ought to be at the service of Catholics as well as non-Catholics. She has the right to defend faith and Christian morality against hostile propaganda.

A. Aren't Catholics resigned to defeat and collaboration with the Nazis?

R. No. Reason and good sense will direct us in the way of confidence, of resistance, because we are certain that our country will be restored and will rise again.

No one familiar with the constant efforts of the Church to establish a modus vivendi with all forms of secular government will underestimate the grave compulsion which drew forth such a statement from the Primate of Belgium.

LUXEMBOURG

According to authoritative information which has reached the Luxembourg Government now established in Montreal, the Catholic Church in the Grand Duchy is persecuted by the occupying authorities for using its tremendous influence in a country where 98% of the population are devout Catholics to strengthen the people's resistance against the Nazi's attempts to Germanize them. The properties belonging to religious orders have been confiscated.

The Benedictine Fathers of St. Maurice-de-Clervaux were deported on an hour's notice to Bastogne in Belgium. The same treatment was inflicted on several other religious communities in Luxembourg-Ville. The members of a patriotic league, led by Catholic clerics, were imprisoned for having distributed pamphlets expressing faith in divine help.

Other members of the Catholic hierarchy were arrested, among them Mgr. Origer, Papal Chamberlain, who was deported at the end of September, 1940. His present fate is unknown.

Pierre Krier, Minister of Labor of the Grand Duchy, has issued a White Paper entitled "Luxembourg Under German Occupation" which includes the following facts: Many priests, mostly old men, are arrested, deported to Germany, or chased out into France. Some of the chief people of the Catholic daily Wart are in jail. Catholics are exposed to specially violent persecutions in the religious as well as the cultural sphere. Monasteries, convents, and other possessions of the Church have been confiscated.

The monastery of Clerf was raided one night and the monks given one hour to leave. They were taken to Bastogne where they were told, "Now run."

Original from UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

The Nazi War Against The Catholic Church. Persecution In Europe Part 4.

As Cardinal Hlond's reports poured into the Vatican, Pope Pius XII protested against the enormities they recounted, with unrelenting vigor.

On September 30, 1939, addressing the Polish colony of Rome and the Polish clergy, he said:

"Before Our eyes now passes a vision of mad horror and gloomy despair, a multitude of fugitives and wanderers, all those who no longer have a country or a home . . . We hope that God in His mercy will not permit that the exercise of religion be hindered in your country. We hope despite the many reasons for fear inspired by the only too-well-known plans of the enemies of God that Catholic life should continue profound and truthful among you."

On October 28, the Holy Father issued his first Encyclical. In it he wrote: "Venerable brethren, the hour when this Our first encyclical reaches you is in many respects a real 'hour of darkness' (cf. St. Luke xxii, 53) in which the spirit of violence and of discord brings indescribable suffering to mankind ... The blood of countless human beings, even non-combatants, raises a piteous dirge over a nation such as Our dear Poland, which, for its fidelity to the church, for its services in the defence of Christian civilization, written in indelible characters in the annals of history, has a right to the generous and brotherly sympathy of the whole world, while it awaits, relying on powerful intercession of Mary, help of Christians, the hour of a resurrection in harmony with the principles of justice and true peace."

And in a Christmas Eve allocution to the Sacred College of Cardinals, the Pope, in speaking of the Nazi-Polish war condemned the "atrocities and the illegal use of means of destruction, even against non-combatants, refugees, old persons, women and children, and the disregard of human dignity, liberty and human life" as "acts that cry for the vengeance of God."

On November 16 and 17, 1940, the Vatican radio categorically denied reports by certain Spanish journalists, inspired from German sources, that the situation in Poland had undergone a change for the better. It stated that the religious life of many millions of Catholics continued to be brutally restricted. Among other things, it made clear that in the course of the previous four months at least four hundred clergy had been deported from Poland into Germany.

"The Catholic associations in the General Government," the Vatican radio went on, "also have been dissolved, the Catholic educational institutions have been closed down, and Catholic professors and teachers have been reduced to a state of extreme need, or have been sent to concentration camps. The Catholic press has been rendered impotent.

"In the part incorporated with the Reich, and especially in Posnania, the representatives of the Catholic priests and orders have been shut up in concentration camps. The number of priests sent to camps from the Posnan area alone exceeds 200. Certain of them have died in these camps. In other dioceses the priests have been put in prison. Entire areas of the country have been deprived of all spiritual ministrations, and the church seminaries have been dispersed."

On October 27, 1940, it was revealed that admission to churches in incorporated territory is permitted only during services authorized to be held twice a week.

On January 7, 1941, it was reported that the Nazis were blocking an effort of the Vatican to send a delegate to Poland, to investigate conditions.

On February 16, it was revealed that, in sub-Carpathia, entire villages were being deported. The Nazis then closed the churches, saying there were no parishioners to attend them.

On March 9, the clergy of the famed and venerated Jasnagora Abbey at Czestochowa were shot, the abbey transformed into a Gestapo headquarters, according to a Vatican source.

On the same day, Dziennik Polski, published in London, stated that since September 1939, 200 priests had been interned or shot in the Nazi occupied areas. Other sources put the figure far higher, saying that, of the 7,000 priests in Poland, no less than half had been shot or thrown into concentration camps where their ultimate fates remained unknown.

On March 28, the Polish Government-in-exile reported that 14 priests and monks had been killed by the Nazis during the preceding weeks, some of them having been tortured to death.

Father Adam Rosalski of the Kielce Catholic Seminary was fired on in the streets by the Gestapo, chased into a house, and then bayonetted to death.

Stormtroopers, executing Father Klimacki, first tore off his cross and slashed his face with it. Eighty-seven priests of Cracow were sent to work in the quarries near Linz, Austria. In midsummer a new wave of anti-Catholic persecution began, and all Catholic Center priests in Cracow were arrested and deported to Germany, while their leaders were sent to concentration camps. The sufferings of Christians in Poland are so numerous that their recital becomes after a time so overwhelming as nearly to numb the senses of him who hears. Yet we have reproduced but the barest fraction of that which is attested in the outer world. What deeds have been forever hidden behind the most savage censorship in Europe can only be surmised.

YUGOSLAVIA

The Reverend John La Farge, S.J., in a series of articles in America, a pre-eminent Catholic weekly in the United States, gives the following account of the persecution of the Church in Slovenia:

"An official report sent to the Holy See and to Mussolini by the Consulta established by the Italian Government in Italian-occupied Slovenia, has recently been brought to this country, by an unimpeachable eye-witness to some of the very scenes therein detailed.

"The report covers the period from the invasion of Slovenia—as part of Yugoslavia—by Hitler on April 6 of this year and up to May 18. What is therein related is but the prelude to what we can infer to have happened since.

"It may be briefly described as hell for Catholics and Catholicism in Slovenia, a 98% Catholic country, a hell deliberately planned by Adolf Hitler, out of his diabolical hatred for Christ and His Church.

"In the very first days after their arrival on the Slovene territory, that is to say, from April 11, 1941 on, the Germans began to claim and seize the Slovenian Church property, real-estate and chattel property and to dissolve the Slovene religious houses. This fate was experienced by the institutions of the Franciscan Fathers in Kamnik and Brezje (where the Franciscans had charge of the Slovenian National Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin), the monasteries of the Capuchin Fathers in Celje (seat of the Province) in Maribor, Ptuj and Skofjaloka; the convent of the Minor Conventuals in Ptuj; the residence of the Jesuits in Maribor; the establishments of the Vincentian Fathers in Celje and Groblje, near Domzale (with a well-equipped mission printing press). Religious houses of women experienced the same treatment ...

"The German officials for the greater part left the execution of the persecution of the Slovenes to young, often not even twenty-year-old, members of the SS and SA divisions and Gestapo formations. In house-searching, arrests and seizures, the attitude and conduct of these German agencies wherever they had anything to do with sacred objects and sacred places were brutally sacrilegious.

"So for instance, in the parish church in Kranj early on the ninth of May of this year occurred the following: The priest catechist Zuzek, who alone among the clergy of the city of Kranj had not been arrested up to this time, was celebrating Mass. At the Consecration, an officer of the Gestapo strode into the church with his cap on his head and a lighted cigarette in his mouth. He walked through the church and up before the altar with his revolver raised and threatened the priest. The faithful assembled in the church hastily dispersed. The officer sat down then in the first pew and yelled away at the priest. The priest consumed the Blessed Sacrament and left the altar . . .

"The first victim of death among the Slovene prisoners was a Jesuit Father, Aloysius Zuzek, an old man of seventy-six years, victim of pneumonia from lying on the prison floor, who declared on his death bed as actual witnesses relate, 'They have beaten me.'

"In Begunje, near Lesce, over 500 Slovene prisoners were lodged in the penal institute for women at that place, of whom 105 were priests. The rest were respectable persons from other walks of life. Even these had to clean the latrines, carry the fecal matter out on the fields and perform such other works. By such labors and by the manner of their execution, the priests were to be humiliated and degraded to the utmost before the populace and their priestly vocation made to seem ridiculous and physically repulsive . . .

"The retired professor of religion, Rev. Anton Cestnik, in Celje, seventy-three years old, had to clean the steps before the barracks in Celje . . .

"Before the clergy of the Ptuj district were shipped over the border to Croatia the leader of the Gestapo spoke to the exiles:

'You are Slovenes, we are Germans. We have no use for you, you have no use for us. We have come here with the firm intention to remain here. For this reason you have got to get out. If anyone undertakes to come back here he will be put in a concentration camp from which there is no escape, or he will be shot. Do not speak any evil of us. We are everywhere and will find you everywhere.'

"They were then loaded upon trucks and taken away to Croatia.

"All priests were brought into the Kratky Inn where they were physically examined from three to half-past eight o'clock in the evening. Each one of them was brought into the little room where he had to undress even to his underclothes. Rev. Ocepek from Ovisise had to strip himself completely . . . they were shamelessly ridiculed and mocked.

"Religious news, from Slovenia's two dioceses of Ljubljana and Maribor, follows the same pattern after May 1941, as during the weeks preceding.

"The German occupation, according to the Italian memorandum of November 1, 1941, has extended over 145 of the 277 parishes of the Ljubljana diocese, that is to say, over 205,000 souls. Before the occupation, 245 diocesan and Order Priests were carrying out their apostolic mission in this territory. Now there is not one left who can do this freely. Of the parish priests three have been left at their posts. They can bury the dead, baptize and confess only within their own parish; they are not now, however, allowed to preach or to teach catechism in the schools. The fourth priest who is still at his post cannot even enter his church. Special permit is needed to bury the dead. A few pensioned priests remain in this region, who are forbidden, however, even to say Mass. The rest of the clergy were some exiled, some arrested and sent to the various concentration camps, to be maltreated and eventually removed to Croatia, where they were left wholly destitute.

"Of the 260 parishes in the Diocese of Maribor about 430 priests of the diocesan clergy and 109 of the regular clergy exercised their ministry among a population of about 653,000 souls. Of these, perhaps 36 are still pensioners, some are still active and some are new—all the others have been exiled. Eight German priests have already been installed. Naturally these preach in German, after approval of their sermons by the Gestapo. The Slovene language has been banned even in the confessional. The priests can celebrate Mass only in the parish assigned to them. They are nothing more than prisoners, watched by the Gestapo.

"The Bishop for Maribor, Dr. Ivan Tomazic and the Slovene clergy have reacted with courage and superhuman energy. Pressure has been put upon the Bishop to leave Maribor, but he has stated that he will submit only to physical force."

Original from UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

The Nazi War Against The Catholic Church. Persecution In Europe Part 3.

German cavalry and motorized units entering Poland from East Prussia during 1939.

"The terrorism to which the clergy and the 500 civilians interned in the concentration camp at Opava (Troppau) in the Sudetens were exposed during September and October, 1939, was particularly frightful. On their arrival they were received with a hail of blows from sticks . . . Their bedding consisted of rotten and verminous straw. The Germans forced the priests to take off their cassocks, and their breviaries and rosaries were taken from them. They were set to the most degrading labours. For any infraction of the regulations, even involuntary, the prisoners were beaten; sometimes, merely in order to terrorize them or perhaps from caprice, they were beaten until the blood ran* Many died.

.. The German police are beginning to take much interest in those who attend the Polish services, and to register their Christian and surnames on the church doors. There have been cases where those attending Polish services have even been photographed. And even prayer-books brought to church by the faithful are examined and listed.

. . The German authorities refuse to allow Polish children to be prepared for confession and first communion in their native language. As the children, boys and girls, very seldom understand a little German, they are forced to wait before being able to receive the Sacrament.

. . . The pilgrimages to the shrine of Our Lady of Pickary have been forbidden; all manifestations of the faith outside the churches have become impossible; and even inside, every act and every word of the priest's is controlled."

Diocese of Lodz —Incorporated in the Reich, with exception of some parishes which are situated in the Government General.

.. An eye witness reports as follows: 'In the diocese of Lodz alone several dozens of priests and religious clergy, with their bishop, Mgr. Tomczak, were sent to Radogoszcz. The newcomers were greeted with a frightful hail of blows with sticks, which did not spare even U.K. Mgr. Tomczak himself. The majority were then left without food for three days. The number of those detained amounted to about 2,000. They had to sleep on mouldy straw. The guards insulted and cruelly maltreated the prisoners. One could not enumerate all the insults and humiliations inflicted on them. The priests were made to wash out the latrines with their hands. It was not rare for the guards to order the prisoners to kneel down in a row, touch the ground with their foreheads, and call out, "We are Polish pigs." One day a policeman came into a room and said sarcastically, "You would like me to hang an image of the Virgin on the wall for you to pray to for victory? That would be the last straw." Then turning to the bishop he added, "You also will be hanged soon." A man who asked to be allowed to tend the bishop's injured foot was shot.'

"After long weeks of this sort of treatment, the sick priests were dismissed from the camp, and immediately sent to the Government General. In this way the unhappy diocese was likewise deprived of its clergy."

Diocese of Wloclawek — Incorporated in the Reich.

. . At Wloclawek, for three months, the people were forbidden to attend any church but that of the Minorities; but there have now for a few weeks been Sunday services in one of the Parish churches. In the deaneries of Lipno and Nieszawa there are no priests any more; in the others there are ever fewer.

"Services, where they are permitted, take place only on Sundays. Marriages and all offerings for the needs of public worship are forbidden. The Catholic Action has been suppressed, and its diocesan president, M. Pulawski, Chamberlain of Cape and Sword to His Holiness, was shot. The popular diocesan weeklies and the outstanding monthly, Athenaeum, edited specially for the clergy, and widely read throughout Poland, have all been suppressed.

"The crosses and chapels have been destroyed, and the patrimony of the Church confiscated; the parochial houses and the lands of the beneficiaries have been confiscated, and the revenues of the clergy stolen. After the publication of the encyclical Summi Pontificates, the police destroyed a monument to Pope Pius XI put up on the walls of the Cathedral.

"The college and the Dlugosz episcopal lyc6e at Wloclawek have been occupied and stripped of all their modern equipment, and are at present used by the soldiers. The Jesuit church and novitiate at Kalisz were made into a temporary prison for persons exiled to the Government General. The Salesians had to move from their properties and the school buildings belonging to the Ursulines of Wloclawek were turned into barracks ; and the Sisters of St. Vincent were driven from their hospital at Wloclawek and from all their other works."

Supplement to report of Jan. 9th
last on the religious situation in
the Archdiocese of Gniezno and Poznan.

Archdiocese of Poznan

.. In general, the situation in the archdiocese of Poznan may be stated as follows:

5 priests shot.

27 priests confined in harsh concentration camps at Stuthof and elsewhere in the Altreich.

190 priests in prison or in the concentration camps at Bruczkow, Chludowo, Goruszki, Kazmierz Biskupi, Lad, Lubin, and Puszczykowo.

35 priests expelled into the territory called Government General.

11 priests died in prison and their bodies burned in crematoria.

11 priests seriously ill in consequence of ill-treatment.

122 parishes entirely without priests.

Documents: Report of Feb. 19, 1940.

". . . The Chapel of the Ursulines at Koscierzyna has been profaned. The sacred vestments were used for sacrilegious buffooneries. One of the stoles was put on a dog.

Documents: Report of Feb. 27, 1940.

"... A few days ago I was at Katowice, when there were renewed mass executions of Poles on the space near the municipal park. Among the victims were priests. Their eyes were bandaged with pocket-handkerchiefs. After the volley had been fired, these same handkerchiefs, blood-stained though they might be, were used to bandage the eyes of others of the condemned. One of the priests was not killed and began to rise. He was then dispatched by blows with gun-butts.

Documents: Report of April 5, 1940.

"... In the monastery at ...................... a few serving brothers were all who were left. The last monk had been deported in November to a concentration camp near Danzig. The aspect of .................. is completely changed. The crosses and commemorative monuments have disappeared from the streets and the park. A beautiful statue of the Holy Virgin, at the feet of which numerous religious manifestations used to take place, has disappeared. The chapel of the religious community has been closed and the pews burnt in the stoves. The Church has been closed. The consecrated linen from the chapel and the church, the chandeliers and all the objects used in the church services have been carried away. On March 14th the new Hitlerian tenants got up a religious masquerade. They rang the Church bells, which had been silent for months, and when the faithful from the vicinity arrived, they saw a crowd of young people making merry, wearing chasubles, copes, and priests' berets, going round the park in procession, with rosaries and holy water sprinklers in their hands. The people withdrew in indignation. It was the eve of the festival of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows!

Documents: Report of April 7, 1940.

"Those who have been worst treated are Canon Szreybrowski, Curate Janicki of Sroda, Father Haase, rural dean to Kicin, and Canon Swinarski of Czarnkow. The priests* families were told they must pay three marks to have their ashes."

FINAL OBSERVATIONS OF CARDINAL HLOND, PRIMATE OF POLAND, CONCLUDING HIS REPORTS TO POPE PIUS XII

". . . Hitlerism aims at the systematic and total destruction of the Catholic Church in the rich and fertile territories of Poland which have been incorporated in the Reich.

"... Almost everywhere the ecclesiastical administration of the dioceses has been effectively destroyed. The bishops, even when they are left in their sees, are only allowed to exercise their pastoral functions to a very limited extent.

"... The Cathedrals have been closed and their keys are kept by the invaders; one has been made into a garage. Five bishops' palaces have been invaded, and one of them has been turned into an inn, the bishop's chapel serving as a ballroom. In the chapel of the Primate's palace at Poznan the police have put a dog-kennel. All the seminary students have been dispersed and the seminaries occupied by the Hitlerian authorities.

. . It is known for certain that thirty-five priests have been shot, but the real number of victims, whose names could not be ascertained, undoubtedly amounts to more than a hundred. More than twenty have died in prison. A hundred priests were maltreated and tortured; another hundred are suffering in concentration camps; hundreds of others, again, have been driven into Central Poland. Those who have been permitted to stay are subjected to numerous humiliations, are paralyzed in the exercise of their pastoral duties, and are stripped of their parochial benefices and all their rights. They are entirely at the mercy of the Gestapo, without possibility of appeal.

"In many districts the life of the Church has been completely crushed, the clergy having been almost all expelled; the Catholic churches and cemeteries are in the hands of the invaders. Catholic worship hardly exists any more; the word of God is not preached, the Sacraments are not administered, even to the dying. In certain localities Confession is forbidden. In the remainder of the territory the churches can be open only on Sundays, and then for a very short time. For seven months marriages between Poles have been forbidden. The Catholic Action has been completely suppressed. The Catholic press has been destroyed. The least initiative in the matter of the religious life is forbidden. Charitable associations and works have likewise been destroyed.

"Monasteries and convents have been methodically suppressed, as well as their flourishing works of education, publicity, social welfare, charity, and care of the sick. Their houses and their institutes have been occupied by the army or the Nazi party. Many monks have been imprisoned ; a great number of nuns have been dispersed.

. . The invaders have, further, confiscated or sequestrated the patrimony of the Church, considering themselves as its masters. The Cathedrals, the bishops' palaces, the seminaries, the canons' residences, the revenues and endowments of bishoprics and chapters, the funds of the curias and seminaries, the fields and woods constituting the ecclesiastical benefices, the churches with their furnishings, the presbyteries with their furniture, and the personal property of the priests, the archives, and the diocesan or religious museums—all have been pillaged by the invaders."

The Nazi War Against The Catholic Church. Persecution In Europe Part 2.

Hitler in Warsaw

"The clergy is subjected to the same treatment as the priests of the archdiocese of Gniezno. They are maltreated, arrested, held in prison or concentration camps, deported to Germany, expelled to Central Poland. At present about fifty are in prison and in concentration camps.

"The pastors Rev. John Jadrzyk of Lechlin, Rev. Anthony Kozlowicz, Rev. Adam Schmidt of Roznowo, and Rev. Anthony Rzadki, professor of religion at Srem, have been shot. There is insistent report that other priests have also been shot, but the report is not certain, for one reason that the executions are being carried out now without publicity being given to them.

. . The churches that are open can be used for devotions only on Sundays from 9 till 11. Priests have begun to say Mass on week-days in the early hours of the morning behind closed doors. Marriages are not being celebrated. There are no sermons and no music. Crucifixes have been removed from classrooms, as well as holy pictures, and religion is no longer taught.

"The Polish Episcopate had made Poznan the national centre for organization and direction of religious activity and especially of the Catholic Action for the entire Republic. Unfortunately, all these centres of tremendous activity, charitable works, organizations, and publications have been destroyed by German authorities.

"The national centres of the Pontifical Association for the Propagation of the Faith, and of St. Peter Apostle have been suppressed.
"... The National Institute for Catholic Action has been abolished. It was the directing centre of all the Catholic activity in Poland.
.. The National President of Catholic Action, the lawyer Mr. Dziembowski, and the office staff are in prison. The Director of the National Institute, Rev. Francis Marlewski, was first imprisoned, then expelled into Central Poland.

"The offices of the national centres of the Association of Catholic Women were raided and assigned to other purposes; the same is true of the offices of the Catholic Youth and Catholic Girls Associations. The National President of the Catholic Youth Association, Edward Potworowski, a noble of Gola, Private Chamberlain of Cape and Sword to His Holiness, was publicly shot in Gostyn Square. The President of the Catholic Girls Association, Miss Maria Su-chocka, also of a noble family, together with her mother and brother, who had been deprived of his pharmacy at Pleszew, was robbed even of personal effects and expelled to Central Poland.

"The Graduate School of Catholic Social Studies has been closed.
. . The Catholic Institute of Pedagogy has been closed. This was a school recognized officially, destined to form competent and qualified teachers and nurses for Catholic schools and hospitals. It was frequented by many Sisters.

"The illustrated Catholic weekly, Przewodnik Katolicki, a paper for the people, has ceased to exist after a brilliant career of forty-three years.

"The esteemed Catholic weekly, Kultura, has been suppressed.

"The Tecza, an illustrated, literary Catholic monthly of more than ordinary value, is no longer edited.

"The Ruch Katolicki has been suppressed, a monthly publication and official organ of Catholic Action.

"The Zjednoczenie, an organ of the National Association of Catholic Women, the Przyjaciel Mlodziezy and the Mloda Polka, organs respectively of the Catholic Boys and the Catholic Girls Associations, have been suppressed.

"The Teologia Praktyczna, monthly pastoral review for the clergy of Poland, has been suppressed.

"The monthly review Ruch Charytatywny, organ of the Christian Charity movement in Poland, has been suppressed.

"The Przewodnik Spoleczny, a Catholic monthly dedicated to modern social questions, has been suppressed.

"Besides these organizations and publications of national scope, all the organizations and publications in Poznan belonging to the archdiocese of Gniezno and Poznan were suppressed."

Report of Nov. 29, 1939.

. . Our boys and a part of our girls over fourteen years of age are being deported to Germany. After the Sunday services these young people are arrested at the church door and sent off; a transport leaves every week.

. . Nothing certain is known of the fate of Canon Schulz of Bydgoszcz; probably he has been shot, and Canon Casimir Stepczynski as well. The Lazarist Fathers Wiorek and Szarek have been shot, while their confreres are in prison; soldiers are indulging in orgies in the church, which was closed under the pretext that the dome was unsafe. The priests of the deanery of Gniewkowo were all taken to prison and nothing more is known of them. Fr. Skrzypczak was killed by blows of a rifle. The parish priest, Fr. Domachowski, was imprisoned and obliged to repair a bridge, standing up to his waist in water.

. . Fr. Klein of Chometowo was imprisoned and forced to break stones on the streets. Fr. Janke of Jaktorowo has been shot. All the priests of Kcynia have been deported; the church there has been closed for two months. Fr. Romoald Soltysinski of Rzadkwin has died in prison. At Strzelno eighteen priests were put in prison, some of whom were later released, others deported. Fr. Cichowski of Sololniki has been in prison from the beginning and nothing is known of his fate. Fr. Namyslowski was beaten; they tried to force him by inhuman torture to profane the cross; he was taken to Wrzesnia half dead, and nothing more has been heard of him. Fr. Smolinski of Morzewo was put in prison and forced to dig potatoes. At Naklo, the pastor, Fr. Geppert, and his assistants, Frs. Chojnacki and Domek, were put in prison and are probably at Buchenwald near Weimar; their church is closed and ecclesiastical funds confiscated. Fr. Chojnacki has been forced to transport coal through the streets of Naklo. Fr. Koncewicz, at first in prison at Gniezno, was later deported to Germany. Canon Schwarz, at first in prison, has now been interned. Mgr. Schvenborn is in prison. Fr. Lewicki of Goscieszyn was shot. The interned priests of the deanery of Trzemeszno were compelled to tear down a synagogue. For the past two months Mass was no longer celebrated in the District of Znin; all the priests are under arrest; the administration of the Sacraments is forbidden. Fr. Zeno Niziolkiewicz has been shot. At present the priests of Znin are forced to break stones on the streets."

Report of Dec. 10, 1939.

 . . The Gestapo rages especially against Catholic Action, all of whose funds they have confiscated. The national president and its officials are in prison.

"Crucifixes and statues which lined the roads and had given the country a Catholic character have been destroyed; even the holy figures of saints that were on the houses or in the gardens have been destroyed. In one district candles were confiscated from the churches.

. . The primatial palace of Poznan has been completely ruined, the pious objects of devotion destroyed, decorations torn down, furniture broken. They carried off the linen, wine, and paintings; they burnt records and books."

Diocese of Chelmno —Incorporated in the Reich.

. . The ancient Cathedral, a veritable jewel of Gothic art, was first closed and then made into a garage, and it is now proposed to turn it into a market-hall. The statue of the Immaculate Virgin, erected in front of the Cathedral in 1854 to commemorate the promulgation of the Dogma, has been overthrown.

"The bishop's palace was entered and despoiled of all its treasures, works of art and furniture. The valuable library, containing about twenty thousand volumes, was pillaged. The diocesan park was laid waste. Shortly afterwards the bishop's palace was turned into a hotel, its beautiful chapel being used as a ball-room.

"The seminaries, large and small, with the college and the secondary school, are occupied by the German army. All the teachers have been driven out. The seminary cellars have been for several weeks the scene of tortures inflicted on both priests and Catholic laymen.

"Of the 650 priests devoted to the cure of souls in the schools and in the Catholic Action, only some twenty have been left. The others were imprisoned or deported, or forced to perform exhausting and humiliating labour, at which some died of fatigue.

"Those priests who worked in the Catholic Youth associations had most to suffer.

"It is not known where the majority of the clergy are detained, as the German authorities keep it a secret. It seems likely, however, that a large number are imprisoned in the concentration camp at Gorna Grupa, and the rest in that of Kazimierz Biskupi, or at Stuthof near Danzig, if not in other concentration camps in Germany. Some, however, were sent to the area of the Government General.

"It is stated that a large number of priests have been shot, but neither the number nor the details are as yet known, as the occupation authorities maintain an obstinate silence on the subject. .

 . . The flourishing religious life of the diocese has been almost entirely suppressed. The churches have almost all been closed and confiscated by the Gestapo, which removes the pictures and other objects of value. Scarcely thirty churches are open for just two hours on Sundays. There is a little more liberty allowed in the city of Torun, where singing during divine service is permitted.

"... All the crosses and sacred emblems by the road-sides have been destroyed. At Gdynia the Germans publicly overthrew the great cross which stood before the Church of the Holy Virgin, and covered it with filth.

. . The great cross standing on Kamienna Gora, which used to be illuminated at night and venerated from afar by mariners at sea as a religious greeting of a Catholic Gdynia, was also overthrown.

. . 95 per cent of the priests have been imprisoned, expelled, or humiliated before the eyes of the faithful. The Curia no longer exists ; the Cathedral has been made into a garage as at Pelplin; the bishop's palace into a restaurant; the chapel into a ball -room. Hundreds of churches have been closed. The whole patrimony of the Church has been confiscated, and the most eminent Catholics executed."

Diocese of Katowice— Incorporated in the Reich.

. . The treatment inflicted on certain priests in prison has been outrageous. For example, Fr. Kupilas, parish priest of Ledziny, was shut up for three days in the confessional of the church at Bierun, where 300 men and women were imprisoned at the same time without anything to eat and without being allowed to go out to satisfy their natural needs. Fr. Wycislik, vicar of Zyglin, was arrested and beaten in the streets of Tarnowskie Gory until the blood ran, and kicked and even trampled until he lost consciousness. Curate Budny had his sides pierced by numerous bayonet stabs, because the German authorities had ordered him to hold his hands up, and after a certain time he was unable through fatigue to do so any longer.

Original from UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN