Palestine. He was awarded both the I and II Class of the Iron Cross and on 14 December 1917 reached the rank of Colonel (German: Oberst). Ecclesiastical career In 1919 Georg resigned his military commission and began studying theology in Innsbruck, Austria. He was ordained a Catholic priest on 19 March 1921 and shortly afterwards received a doctorate in canon law from the Catholic Faculty of Theology at the University of Innsbruck. He continued his religious studies in Rome and in 1925 graduated from the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. On 18 November 1926 Pope Pius XI named Georg a domestic prelate with the title Monsignor. In the 1930s, Georg was appointed a secular canon at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. On 12 November 1941 Pope Pius XII named Georg a protonotary apostolic de numero participantium (one of the highest ranks of monsignor). Throughout his time in Rome, Georg lived at Villa San Francesco with the Franciscan Brothers of Waldbreitbach. He maintained regular contact with his family, including his first cousin Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria who moved to Rome in 1939. He was also in regular contact with other royal and princely houses; in 1930 he attended the Rome wedding of the Prince of Piedmont (later King Umberto II of Italy) to Princess Marie-José of Belgium, and in 1935 he attended the Rome wedding of Infante Jaime of Spain. In 1938, as grand prior of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George he arranged the transfer of the remains of King Francis II of the Two Sicilies and of his wife Queen Maria Sophie from Schloss Tegernsee in Bavaria to the Chiesa del Santo Spirito in Rome. On 31 May 1943 Georg died at Villa San Francesco. One source says that he had been ill for some time. Another source says that he died unexpectedly of tuberculosis contracted while working at a hospital. He is buried in the Campo Santo Teutonico, the German cemetery immediately outside the walls of Vatican City. In his will he left money to pay for new bronze doors for St. Peter's Basilica; these include the "Door of the Dead" by Giacomo Manzù and the "Door of the Sacraments" by Venanzo Crocetti. Greek succession A few writers (e.g. Martha Schad ) maintain that after the death of his father in 1930, Georg became the successor to the Greek rights of his great-uncle King Otto of Greece