KORUM, MICHAEL FELIX. - Bishop, b. 2 Nov. 1840 at Wickersweier near Colmar, d. 4 Dec. 1921 at Trier. Having completed his studies at Innsbruck, he was ordained priest in 1865 at Strasbourg and taught philosophy and theology at the minor seminary there. In 1881 he became bishop of Trier. In 1886 he reopened the Felician Seminary, which he enlarged.
In 1890 he established a commission of experts to disprove the interpretation put forward in 1876 by Wilmowsky concerning the Holy Tunic, a relic of Christ kept at Trier. The commission declared that examination of the relic had yielded no result contradicting the most ancient traditions, and Bishop K. therefore ordered the relic itself to be exhibited. On that occasion more than a million pilgrims came to Trier, and, as K. himself relates, various miraculous healings took place. When in 1903 a conflict arose between the bishop and the Prussian government over religious instruction, Cardinal Kopp acted as mediator: K., who saw in this intervention, not wholly favorable to him, a condemnation of his conduct, offered his resignation to the Holy See, but it was refused. K. played a leading part in the question of trade unions, maintaining that Catholic workers could not be members of confessionally agnostic associations. At the end of the First World War he devoted himself to the cause of the Saar territory.