monasteries has been accused of any   
offense, or brought before law or condemned.  And if any one were guilty, then  
be brought before the law.  But should the innocent also be 
 
                                                            
 
 
I ask you, before those whose eyes the Jesuit brothers and the sisters  
of the immaculate have for years led their quiet lives devoted only to the honor   
of God and the welfare of their fellow human beings: who thinks these men   
and women guilty of any punishable offense?  Who dares to bring an accusation   
against them?  Let him who dares, prove it.  Not even the Gestapo has brought  
such an accusation, let alone a court of justice.  I bear witness here publicly  
as Bishop to whom is entrusted the supervision of the Orders, that I have the  
greatest respect for the quiet, unassuming Missionary Sisters of Wilkinhege  
who are today being driven out.  They were founded by my very honored episcopal   
friend and fellow countryman the Bishop Amandus Bahlmann, who started the   
Order mainly for the Mission in Brazil, in which he, earning the gratitude of  
Germans in Brazil, worked untiringly up to the time of his death three years  
                            ago.                            
 
                                                            
 
 
I bear witness as a German man and as bishop that I have the greatest   
respect and admiration for the Jesuit Order which I have known from my earliest  
youth and for 50 years from close observation; that I shall be bound to the  
Society of Jesus, my teachers and friends, in love and gratitude until my  
last breath, and that I have an even greater admiration for them now in this  
moment when Christ's prophecy to His disciples is again being fulfilled: "As  
they have persecuted me, so they will persecute you also.  If you were of this  
 world would love its own, but because you are not of this w