Holy Smugglers

Underneath their heavy coifs tears trickled down their cheeks last week as Sister Neophyta, 56 (born Maria Menke), now Mother Superior of the Order of St. Augustine at Cologne, and Sister Englatia, 57 (born Gertrud Dohm), faced their judges in Berlin's Criminal Court. The charge: smuggling 200,000 paper marks out of Germany contrary to the Reich's foreign exchange regulations.

"Are you guilty or not?" the prosecuting attorney kept roaring.

"I confess," said Sister Neophyta, "that I sent money abroad."

She was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, the loss of all civil rights and a fine of $48,400. Sister Englatia received a $400 fine and ten months.

Theirs was the fourth of 52 such smuggling cases pending against Catholic nuns and monks. All 52 raised Nazi diehards to a fine frenzy, for the principle at issue struck at the very fundamentals of Nazi philosophy. Here were Germans of exemplary private character, vowed to poverty, who continued to feel that in such a worldly matter as money their highest duty was not to the nationalist German State, but to an international organization, the Church of Rome.

The first "holy smuggling" trial fortnight ago was that of Sister Wernera (born Katherine Weidenhoefer) of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in Cologne. Years ago the Sisters of Charity borrowed $100,000 from Mercantile-Commerce Bank & Trust Co. of St. Louis to complete a nursing hospital in Cologne. On the dot the sisters met installments of their debt, until just $25,000 remained owing by 1935. A Dr. Hofius, good Catholic layman, of the Muenster Bank in Westphalia, suggested how this last amount might be paid off. By elaborate code (whenever Mercantile-Commerce was to be mentioned, the nuns used the phrase "Louis has written a letter"), he advised the sisters to smuggle paper marks out of Germany, pay off the St. Louis debt and further reduce their obligations by repurchasing their own bonds at lower rates in foreign markets.

To the Nazi prosecutor this was treason and worse. "You started your letter: 'Let God's grace be with us,' " cried he. "How did you dare commit such blasphemies to cover up common smuggling? I have not seen anything to equal it even in cases of Jewish and Galician grafters."

Sister Wernera was sentenced to five years and a fine of $56,000.

Said George W. Wilson, Executive Committee Chairman of the St. Louis bank: "Isn't it a commentary that Sister Wernera should be penalized for her courage and integrity in trying to meet an obligation of honor, and that others are commended for evading their just debts?"

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