was a great gentleman, a true aristocrat, a Renaissance prince of the Church. He welcomed us politely but with reserve." Galen began by commending Stroop's mother for her devout Catholicism, then categorically refused to accept or praise Rosenberg's doctrines of euthanizing or forcibly sterilizing disabled people. He denounced the Nazis for trying to introduce Germanic neo-paganism into his diocese. He scoffed at marriage ceremonies and funerals conducted before altars dedicated to Wotan, surprising Stroop, who had attended such a ceremony only days before. Galen closed by assuring the officers that the Church would remain loyal to the state in all lawful matters. He expressed his deep love for Germany and reminded them that he had been the first bishop to publicly acknowledge the new regime. In Stroop's view, Galen's German patriotism "was tainted by Papist ideals, which have been harmful to Germany for centuries. Besides, the Archbishop's orders came from outside the Fatherland, a fact which disturbed us. We all know that despite its diverse factions, the Catholic Church is a world community, which sticks together when the chips are down." In June 1935 he delivered a sermon that connected the heresy of the Anabaptists to the "sins of the Jews". He told his audience that "whoever does not listen to the Church is a heathen and officially is a sinner". He described how "the Israelites debased the Savior", and how people who resisted Jesus as the Christ appeared on the "side of the blinded Jews". He equated the rejection of Christianity with rejection of worldly authority, leading to anarchy and chaos. He pointed to the Russians also as among those who had not respected God-given authority. Galen did not protest the antisemitic 1935 Nuremberg Laws, or the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938. Until his death, he refused to admit that referring to Jews as "degenerate", "rejected", and "lost" or labeling anarchy or liberalism as "Jewish", in any way aided the Nazi regime or and its racist antisemitism. By late 1935, Galen was urging a joint pastoral letter from the German bishops to protest about an "underground war" against the church. By early 1937, the church hierarchy in Germany, which had initially attempted to co-operate with the Nazi government, had become highly disillusioned. In March, Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern), accusing the Nazi government of violating the 1933 Concordat and of sowing the "tales