Reorganization of occupied dioceses during World War II
A note from Reich ambassador to the Holy See, Diego von Bergen, dated 29 August 1941 demanded that "all ecclesiastical appointments to important posts in annexed or occupied regions be first communicated to Berlin".
[2] The note was meant to apply to all "residential bishops, coadjutors with the right of succession, prelati nullius, apostolic administrators, capitular vicars, and all having equivalent functions in the government of a diocese".
[2] Explicitly included in this demand were Alsace, Lorraine, Luxembourg, lower Styria, Carinthia, and Carniole, as Germany viewed the right of consultation on appointments granted by the Reichskonkordat as extending to occupied territory.
In October 1938, the western border regions of Czechoslovakia had been dissected and annexed mostly by Nazi Germany (Sudetenland) and, to a small extent, by the Second Polish Republic (Trans-Olza, an area of Czechoslovak Silesia).
The Holy See complied and Pope Pius XI then subjected the Catholic parishes in Trans-Olza to an apostolic administration under Stanisław Adamski, Bishop of Katowice, who held that position until 31 December 1939.
[12] The Occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany prevented the Catholic hierarchy from reconstituting itself although Jesuit Henri Werling was permitted to assume Profittlich's duties.
After a francophile manifestation on the occasion of the feast of the Assumption of Mary (15 August) in 1940, the Nazi occupants expelled Joseph-Jean Heintz, Bishop of Metz and he could return only in the autumn of 1944.
[2] The reply of Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione was that "the government of Kaunas should appreciate that the Holy See cannot run behind armies and change bishops as combat troops occupy new territory belonging to countries other than their own".
[13] Cardinal August Hlond, the primate of Poland, was unable to return to his Archdioceses of Poznań-Gniezno, having accompanied the Polish government-in-exile to Romania and then continued to Rome.
[13] However, he had appointed vicars general to represent him, Cathedral Capitular Eduard van Blericq for Gniezno and Auxiliary Bishop Walenty Dymek for Poznań.
[13] Approximately 2,600, or 20% of all, Polish clergy members were killed by the Nazis, including five of the six bishops of the Reichsgau Wartheland; priests were targeted for their resistance activities and cultural importance.
[1] Prelate Franz Hartz, German Territorial Prelature of Schneidemühl, was suggested by the ambassador as administrator for Gniezno-Poznań, Danzig's Bishop Carl Maria Splett for Chełmno-Pelplin, and Breslau's Archbishop Adolf Bertram for Katowice, which had been disentangled from his see in 1922.
[11] On 23 December 1939 Orsenigo appointed Bertram and Leopold Prečan, Archbishop of Olomouc, as apostolic administrators for the Catholic parishes in Trans-Olza with effect of 1 January 1940.
[11] After Nowowiejski's murder in Soldau concentration camp on 28 May 1941 the Holy See invested his vicar general Stanisław Figielski as apostolic administrator on 6 March 1942.
[10] In early 1941, Adamski was expelled from Katowice diocese, which made Stryż appeal at Orsenigo in March the same year to invest Heinrich Wienken as apostolic administrator.
He then decided to move back home to become bilingual and to live as German expatriate in the Polish Katowice diocese, where its Bishop Hlond consecrated him priest on 20 June 1926.
[10] On 18 October 1941, Orsenigo appointed Joseph Paech (1880–1942), Capitular vicar of Poznań-Gniezno, as apostolic administrator for the Catholics among the German minority in Poland within Reichsgau Wartheland.
[19] For the Catholic parishioners of Polish language in Wartheland, Orsenigo appointed Auxiliary Bishop Dymek as apostolic administrator on 9 April 1942, but in August the same year he declared his resignation because of German obstruction and violence.
[23] On 12 November the government-in-exile issued a statement from London stating that "Pius XII's decision is tantamount to the acceptance of illegal German demands and comprises an unfriendly act towards the Polish people".
[24] While the bishops living under German occupation, like Adamski, Teodor Kubina (1880–1951; Częstochowa), Nowowiejski, and Sapieha considered their agreement to and the appointments of administrators for (parts of) their dioceses as the only way to maintain some precarious, though, modus vivendi for the Catholic Church under the anti-Christian and anti-Polish ideology of Nazism, bishops in exile like Hlond and Radoński were more concerned about these emergency measurements because Polish Catholics could resent them as additional humiliation, and Nazi Germany could gain from them a propagandist benefit, misinterpreting them as complaisances by the Holy See.
