Pope Pius XI — Mit brennender Sorge (1937)

“With Burning Concern”: the encyclical smuggled into Nazi Germany and read from Catholic pulpits on Palm Sunday, 1937.

Pope Pius XI wrote this encyclical in German, not Latin, so it could be read directly to German Catholics. It condemned the Nazi regime’s violations of its agreement with the Church and rejected the idolatry of race and state.

Copies were secretly printed and distributed, then read aloud in churches across Germany on March 21, 1937. The regime responded with arrests and the seizure of printing presses.

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