Joannes Baptista Sproll

Sproll's separation from his diocese, his refusal to resign to the then nuncio in Germany, Cesare Orsenigo, and his early and unwavering opposition to Nazi tyranny earned him the popular title of "Martyr Bishop".

In this unity, they broke the tenacious resistance of the Church's enemies and preserved their sacred faith in God, Christ, and the Church over two difficult decades of hardship.As early as July 5, 1934, during a sermon at the Fulda Bishops' Conference, Sproll, according to Franz X. Schmid, provided inspiration for the drafting of Faulhaber's encyclical Mit brennender Sorge: Boniface holds the cross in one hand and the gospel book in the other.

the apostle urges.On October 4, 1938, amid the Sudeten Crisis, Sproll wrote to his diocesan flock: "A war more terrible than humanity has ever experienced has been averted from us.

[4] On August 1, 1940, Archbishop Conrad Gröber of Freiburg and the Vicar General of the Diocese of Rottenburg, Max Kottmann, protested in Berlin on behalf of Sproll against the euthanasia program (the murder of the sick) at the NS killing center Grafeneck, one year before Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen of Münster publicly protested.

On September 8, 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War, Sproll wrote in a pastoral letter: "Already, from all our communities, the able-bodied men have rushed to the borders, following the call of the Führer, to protect home and hearth, and we know that they will fulfill their duty, faithful to their military oath, even at the cost of their lives.

"Despite these "disconcerting" words, the cleric and church historian Franz X. Schmid attests that Sproll was never a "war supporter or glorifier," but, as a "member of the Peace Association of German Catholics, an avowed pacifist.

A memorial plaque to Bishop Sproll in Rottenburg . It reads: On 23 June 1938 the National Socialists stormed the apartment of Dr. Joannes Baptista Sproll, 1870-1949, the seventh Bishop of Rottenburg. In the same year, the government forced the bishop into exile; he could not return to his diocese from Krumbad until after the war
Sproll's coat of arms . Motto in Latin meaning, "Stronger in Faith"
Inscription St. Martin Erolzheim 1943