and Pius XII met in February 1947 and in the fall of 1948 and 1949; although initially Muench (in his letters to others) expressed satisfaction with Pius XII's grasp of the situation in Germany, he later stated that the pope was too reliant on his own, earlier experiences in Germany and did not "fully grasp" the implications of the occupation and increasing secularization. Muench wrote that Pius XII was continuing to interpret the events unfolding in Germany "according to this or that phrase of the Concordat". In the 1953 dedication of the North American College in Rome, Pius XII stopped as he passed by Muench, expressed his gratitude that Muench could join him in Rome, and added "don't forget to see me before you leave". Muench was, according to Father Gerald Weber (in attendance), the only one of the many assembled bishops and cardinals whom Pius XII stopped and talked to. Muench mourned the death of Pius XII in October 1958, telling friends that the pope "treated him with the affection and love of a father to his son". The correspondence between Muench and Pius XII focused almost exclusively on the various opinions shared by the two men, often with great levity, but rarely touched on the issues of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, the wartime relationship between the church and Nazi Germany, and the situation of the postwar Jewry. According to Brown-Fleming, in one private audience between the two in May 1957 Pius XII told Muench a joke about Hitler dying, going to Heaven, and meeting the Old Testament Prophet Moses, who forgives Hitler; Hitler then asks Moses if he set fire to the burning bush himself, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Reichstag fire, which apparently elicited a "big laugh" from Pius XII. Cardinalate and death He was elevated to cardinal on December 14, 1959, by Pope John XXIII. Muench resigned as Bishop of Fargo on December 9, 1959, just before he became Cardinal. He died in Rome on February 15, 1962, and was buried in Fargo. Papers Origins Muench's papers from course of his work in Germany are well preserved. This makes them one of a very few collections of papers from German, American, or Vatican Catholic dignitaries of that time period that are "fully accessible to historians". According to Muench's biographer, Father Colman Barry, Muench took his papers with him to Rome when he retired as nuncio in December