About Michael von Faulhaber
Michael von Faulhaber (5 March 1869 – 12 June 1952) was a German Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Munich and Freising for 35 years, from 1917 to his death in 1952. Created a cardinal in 1921, von Faulhaber remained an outspoken monarchist and denounced the Weimar Republic as rooted in "perjury and treason" against the German Empire during a speech at the 62nd German Catholics' Day of 1922. Cardinal von Faulhaber was a senior member and co-founder of the Amici Israel, a priestly association founded in Rome in 1926 with the goal of working toward the Jewish people's conversion to Christianity, while also seeking to combat antisemitism within the church. His legacy is complicated, having encouraged the German clergy's submission to the Nazi takeover, and acted as a vocal opponent of German democracy, while occasionally voicing opposition to certain actions of the Nazis. His advocacy for Jewish-Catholic reconciliation also grounded itself in a desire for Jews to convert to Catholicism. After the Nazi Party seized control of the German government in 1933, von Faulhaber recognized the new Nazi government as legitimate, required Catholic clergy to be loyal to the government and maintained diplomatic bridges between the regime and the church, while simultaneously condemning certain Nazi policies, including religious persecution of members of the clergy, and actively supporting anti-Nazi German Catholics such as Fritz Gerlich and other persecuted persons. In 1937, von Faulhaber was involved in drafting the anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. Von Faulhaber ordained Joseph Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI) as a priest in 1951 and was the last surviving cardinal appointed by Pope Benedict XV. In 1916 he won the Iron Cross (as the first cleric in the German Empire) at the Western Front for his frontline support of troops by acting as a military chaplain.
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