I repeat, steel yourselves and hold fast! At this moment we are not the hammer, but the anvil. Others, chiefly intruders and apostates, hammer at us; they are striving violently to wrench us, our nation and our youth from our belief in God. We are the anvil, I say, and not the hammer, but what happens in the forge? Go and ask the blacksmith and see what he says. Whatever is beaten out on the anvil receives its shape from the anvil as well as the hammer. The anvil cannot and need not strike back. It need only be hard and firm. If it is tough enough it invariably outlives the hammer. No matter how vehemently the hammer falls; the anvil remains standing in quiet strength, and for a long time will play its part in helping to shape what is being moulded.

Clemens August Cardinal Von Galen (1878-1946)
Bishop of Münster who took a stand against Hitler

“Rome, February 21 1946. The amaranthine procession of cardinals flowed forward, through the main aisle of St. Peter’s. The heart of Roman Catholicism beat in the undulation of the crimson robes. In the flood of incarnadine capes, twenty-two cardinals, newly elected to the consistory, were led forward by their elders. […] Cutting through the blue twilight of the basilica, spotlights sweep across the shoulders of the newcomers. Their artificial beams fall on one tall figure, who is taller by a head than the cohort of the princes of the Church. The eyes of the assembly turn towards this man giant stature, on this wrestler’s profile, on this broad face and high forehead. Who is he? Who is this? A murmur runs through the crowd, slips under the vaults, grows louder, turns into a confused rumbling, and finally erupts into applause. Then pillar by pillar, arcade by arcade, a joyous Italian clamor bursts out under the immense flamboyant vaults: “Il Conte Galen! Il Conte Galen!” The spectators packed into the nave of the basilica seem to have come only to hail “Count Galen.” The cortege stops in front of the throne, and von Galen himself steps forward. Now is his moment. He climbs the steps gravely, with the heavy tread of a laborer. Jubilation resounds behind him, but he is permeated by the solemnity of the moment, and reaching the top the great giant of a man falls to his two knees before Pius XII, this pope who seems so thin and frail, so contemplative and yet so decided. Silence immediately falls over the basilica, and the rustle of brocade is the only sound to be heard. Then, very solemnly and slowly, the Holy Father places the red galero of a cardinal on the great man’s head. The ritual responses sound out. The pope leans forward toward the new Cardinal, as if he were trying to embrace him. “May God bless you, and may God bless Germany.” Pius XII had loved Germany, and it was his desire that this new Cardinal and three others be raised to the Cardinalate. Nine months after the capitulation of the 3rd Reich, Bishop Galen received the consecration of his life, in the heart of Rome, Rome where his gaze had always been drawn even from his earliest childhood years.”

Jérôme Fehrenbach (1969)
Historian