Blessed Clemens August von Galen, a German bishop and cardinal, is celebrated as a figure of resistance against Nazism for his outspoken opposition to the regime's totalitarian practices.
Today's commemoration is for Blessed Clemens August von Galen, a prominent German bishop and cardinal known throughout the world as the "Lion of Münster." Born on March 16, 1878, in Dinklage, Lower Saxony, he received his education at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Austria, and studied in Innsbruck and Münster. He became a priest in 1904, serving in Berlin where he befriended papal nuncio Eugenio Pacelli, who would later become Pope Pius XII. In 1933, he was appointed as the bishop of Münster, becoming a vocal opponent of racism and all forms of totalitarianism, including both Stalinist communism and Hitler's Nazism.
