GALEN, CLEMENS AUGUST von. - Cardinal, born 16 March 1878 at Dinklage Castle (Oldenburg), died 22 March 1946 at Münster. Ordained priest in 1904. He was parish priest, first in Berlin until 1929, and subsequently of the parish of S. Lamberto in Münster, until his appointment as bishop on 5 Sept. 1933, at the most critical moment in relations between Church and State in Germany.
The accession of National Socialism to power and the spread of racist and pagan ideas soon gave the new bishop the opportunity to show himself a worthy defender of the rights of Catholics and of the Church. His sermons of the summer of 1941 are well known, in which he energetically protested against the confiscation of monasteries and convents; these sermons constitute a vehement indictment of the illegal conduct of the Gestapo and the state authorities, as well as of the entire system of government then in force. They had a very wide resonance and made the bishop of Münster a popular figure at home and abroad. In recognition of his energetic defence of the rights of Catholics during the Hitler regime, Pio XII created him, in the Consistory of 18 Feb. 1946, Cardinal of the title of S. Bernardo alle Terme. Premature death struck him immediately after his return to his diocese.