1.1 Pre-war immigration

As early as the medieval era, foreign born individuals settling in England had been legally termed aliens, and those belonging to hostile nations as enemy aliens. There was always a distinction made in British law between the subjects of the monarch, and these immigrants. However, it is important to note that: ‘wholesale internment of enemy aliens was not a feature of wars during the nineteenth century’.Footnote ² John Clement Bird in his 1986 PhD thesis observed that ‘The entry, assimilation and control of aliens has been a subject of recurring conflict and controversy for centuries, and British policy has ranged between harsh restrictions in times of war, international tension, or severe economic difficulties, to almost casual indifference during periods of peace and prosperity.’Footnote ³ By the outbreak of the Great War, Britain had an alien population of about 285,000.Footnote ⁴ Panayi presents Britain as a multi-cultural nation, explaining that: ‘for much of the nineteenth century, until 1891, Germans formed the second largest grouping in Britain after the Irish, reaching a peak of 53,324 in 1911, with over 100,000 entering Britain from the 1880s’.Footnote ⁵ The largest German community was focused in the East End of London, although: ‘outside of London only miniscule German communities developed, never counting more than 3000 souls … The main provincial German communities were in Liverpool, Manchester, and Bradford’.Footnote ⁶ By 1914, the county of Lancashire therefore had the largest concentration of German immigrants outside of the capital. There were also more than 5000 Austrians in Britain. The 1911 census for Lancashire indicates an approximate number of 4000 German nationals and just over 2000 Austrians in residence.Footnote ⁷ We can conclude from these figures that seven percent of the British German population and nearly half the Austrian population were based in the county. Amongst these were numbers of Roman Catholic priests and religious working alongside their counterparts from the British Isles and other European countries.

In contrast, the Belgium immigrant community in Lancashire had never been large prior to the outbreak of the war, although many priests and religious had come to serve in the county. The Italian community was only slightly more significant. The 1911 census records just over 300 Belgian born individuals in the county, and just over 4000 across England, and just over 1,000 Italians in Lancashire, or more than 17,000 Italian born individuals living in England.Footnote ⁸ Belgians did not establish a colony in Manchester, unlike the Italians who based themselves around the district of Ancoats, known locally as ‘Little Italy’. The Salford diocese sought to provide an Italian speaking priest to serve as chaplain: they were generally resident at the church of St Alban, Fawcett Street, or St Michael, George Leigh Street.

Why had significant numbers of foreign nationals decided to settle specifically in Britain? Jacqueline Jenkinson considers the ‘push pull theory’ of immigration, and explains that amongst many other factors, better living standards, the national demand for labour, and the religious and political freedom enjoyed in the United Kingdom, made the country an attractive prospect for many; it was portrayed as ‘a haven for people across the world who had to flee their own home and countries’.Footnote ⁹ As well as considerable communities of Jewish refugees, many European immigrants were Catholics who had also fled to Britain to escape religious persecutions in their own countries. In Italy between 1862 and 1864, General Giuseppe Garibaldi led a series of campaigns to separate Italy from the temporal control of the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope. Rome was eventually captured by the Kingdom of Italy in 1870. No Pope would then leave the Vatican for nearly sixty years, being known as ‘Prisoners of the Vatican’. Many Catholics, including hundreds of priests were forced to flee from Italy or face imprisonment. Meanwhile in Germany, the Kulturkampf of 1871 to 1883 saw the organised state persecution of the Roman Catholic Church by Chancellor Bismark’s government, its aim being to seize control over school and ecclesiastical appointments, and civil marriage. It also resulted in the imprisonment and banishment of many clergy from Germanic states and the exile of much of the Catholic community. Large Italian and German communities thus settled in Britain because of these policies. Samuel Smiles in 1867 waxed lyrical about a ‘glorious asylum which England has in all times given to foreigners fleeing for refuge against oppression and tyranny’.Footnote ¹⁰

The Naturalisation Act of 1870 enabled foreign-born nationals to apply for British citizenship, the requirement being that they surrendered the nationality of their birth and swore allegiance to the Crown. The Act also introduced the renunciation of British nationality and declared that British born women who married foreign men should lose their British nationality. The final pre-war aliens policy to be passed by the British parliament was the 1905 Aliens Act, which ‘provided the formal basis of Great Britain’s aliens policy up to the outbreak of the war … The main avowed purpose of the act was to bar the entry of ‘undesirable aliens’, i.e. criminals, persons suffering from mental or chronic physical diseases, and those likely to become a public charge.’Footnote ¹¹ Effectively, the government was not barring entry to foreigners, but instead making sure that only immigrants who could contribute to British society and not be a burden in any way on the State, would be permitted entry.

1.2 Pre-war relations between the British and immigrants

It is important to examine how anti-immigrant attitudes did not begin in Great Britain with the outbreak of the Great War. During the late nineteenth century there was already developing a ‘public outcry against unrestricted immigration, which rapidly gained momentum after 1880, based partly on the genuine concern of British workers that their livelihoods were being threatened by ‘cut-price’ alien workers.’Footnote ¹² This ill feeling gradually increased over the following two decades as ‘aversion to aliens became more widespread. The targets were mainly Russian and Polish Jews but also came to include Italians and increasingly Germans.’Footnote ¹³ As Bird argues:

This attitude towards Germany had been developing since the nineteenth century: ‘the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and 1871, the founding of the German Empire, and the emergence of a powerful German Navy seemed to pose a direct and dangerous threat to Britain’.Footnote ¹⁵ During the 1890s, Emperor Wilhelm II embarked on an aggressive, imperialist foreign policy – Weltpolitik, or World Policy. Many saw the subsequent growing power of Germany as a direct challenge to Britain’s role on the international stage. Anti-Germanic attitudes were further intensified through scare literature. Boghart’s work demonstrates that ‘From the late nineteenth century, Britons were inundated with books, novels, and pamphlets that depicted, in intricate detail, spies, operating clandestinely among the gullible islanders … the new literary genre fed on and fuelled concerns about alleged machinations of German spies in Great Britain.’Footnote ¹⁶ The most prolific of the anti-Germanic authors of the 1900s and 1910s was William Le Queux, whose novels told stories of German spies working to destroy Britain.Footnote ¹⁷

During the Edwardian era, the British people had also ostracised Belgium as an enemy of humanity, in relation to the atrocities being committed in the Congo, leading to mass anti-Belgian protests across England. In October 1905, a protest against ‘atrocities’ carried out in the Congo Free State took place at the Longsight Baptist Church at Slade Lane, Manchester. The Manchester Courier reported that the protest was against ‘… the cruel outrages and murders inflicted on the natives… by officials of the King of Belgium’.Footnote ¹⁸ By late 1907, the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool led a ‘Monster demonstration of all denominations to protest against the Congo atrocities’.Footnote ¹⁹ A second protest in Manchester took place in December at the Free Trade Hall.Footnote ²⁰ In 1908 the Belgian government took charge of the Congo, removing ownership from their King, Leopold II, who died in December 1909, leading to the succession of his nephew as Albert I, and what the Mayor of Manchester in January 1910 described as ‘the dark cloud, now passing away’.Footnote ²¹

This anti-Belgian attitude in Britain would change abruptly with the German invasion of that country. In November 1914, the Manchester Courier reported that Irish nationalists were using this policy to attack the British government, demonstrated in an article in the Irish Worker:

thus suggesting that the change in British public attitudes towards Belgium was politicised gerrymandering. Peter Cahalan notes ‘how sensitive an issue the treatment of refugees was, at least potentially for British propagandists.’Footnote ²³ Cahalan also postulates that one reason why the Belgian refugee community was made more welcome than other prior immigrant groups was that, ‘there was never any question of their staying permanently’, they were seen as guests in Britain for the duration of the German occupation of their country and as such posed no economic, social or racial threat.Footnote ²⁴

Looking now at Italian relations, during the Italio-Turkish war of 1911-12, British newspapers covered their invasion of Tripoli with descriptions of Italian atrocities:

Similar to the Belgian situation a few years earlier, anti-Italian protest meetings were held across Britain. In London one meeting descended into a violent riot between the English and Italian communities.Footnote ²⁶ These incidents and policies demonstrate that by the end of the Edwardian era, relations between the native British population and the various immigrant communities were fragile, and any appearance of integration was merely a thin shell.

1.3 German espionage in pre-war Britain

The hostility towards the German speaking peoples was probably the most significant, as it was to them that most state efforts were focused. The official justification for the alien control policies was national security, and in particular the prevention of espionage and sabotage. It is necessary thus, to now examine the extent and reality of this threat, a study made possible due to the release of previously sealed German State archives. Leonard Sellers suggests that one of the major issues was that: ‘British authorities did not take the threat of German espionage in Britain too seriously. A state of disbelief and indifference was prevalent in a certain type of politician, journalist and judge.’Footnote ²⁷ Essentially the British government was resting on its laurels in the face of a growing threat. That being said, that from the beginning of the twentieth century, the German Naval Command – the Admiralstab, were developing a dedicated intelligence department, whose role was:

The intelligence wing of the Admiralstab were busy throughout the early 1900s attempting to recruit agents at all levels, from within Britain’s German immigrant population. However, as Boghardt observes, they faced an ‘important obstacle, the difficulty of recruiting agents willing to spy on their host country’.Footnote ²⁹

It was only after 1911, when Captain Arthur Tapken reorganised the intelligence department, and began sending external agents to Great Britain to spy on the Royal Navy—so called ‘tension travellers’—that espionage began to become more effective. These agents recruited residents to act as intermediaries, including the hairdresser Karl Gustav Ernst, a British citizen of German descent. Ernst was employed by the German service from 1911 until 1914 and was given the task of recruiting new agents. However, despite successfully recruiting a handful of these intermediaries and agents from within the immigrant population, yet again German intelligence struggled to persuade the population en-masse to cooperate: ‘hardly any Germans residing in Britain agreed to become operatives. In fact, members of the German colony who were asked to become agents, sometimes turned to the British authorities instead, denouncing the recruitment attempt.’Footnote ³⁰

One of the most prominent agents was Gustav Steinhauer, known as the Kaiser’s Master Spy, who gathered intelligence on British warships in Scottish seaports.Footnote ³¹ This incident alone demonstrates that there was a danger posed to Britain’s military security by these operations. With efforts to ‘turn’ the Anglo-Germanic colony failing, German intelligence: ‘began to employ men who could at best be described as adventurers, at worst as ordinary criminals … some were recruited directly out of prison.’Footnote ³²

Part of the explanation for why the government was failing before the war to take the threat of espionage seriously, was that international terrorism was an almost unknown occurrence in the United Kingdom. With the important exception of Irish Nationalists and Suffragettes, only two notable bombings had taken place on English soil in the 1890s. The first occured in 1894, when Martial Bourdin, an immigrant Frenchman had set off a homemade explosive in Greenwich Park. The Penny Illustrated Paper, a popular working-class tabloid, reported that ‘Nothing definite has transpired as to Bourdin’s intentions’ except that he had come ‘under the influence of anarchist apostles … in favour of the gospel of hatred’.Footnote ³³ Three years later in April 1897, a bomb went off on the London Metropolitan Railway at Aldersgate Station. Initially blame was placed on Fenians;Footnote ³⁴ however, it was later re-attributed to Russian anarchists, protesting against the imprisonment of one of their members.

Boghardt concludes that the pre-war German intelligence operations were of limited success and were undertaken in an often-amateurish manner.Footnote ³⁵ However, we cannot ignore the fact that Germany was preparing for war and their agents were actively at work in Britain, spying on military bases and feeding information home, just as we cannot overlook the fact that even in small numbers, ordinary members of the German colony were assisting them in their efforts, in a direct threat to national security.

2.1 The Seculars

The diocese of Salford, which covers most of south and east Lancashire, had always counted a large number of Europeans amongst its regulars, seculars, and religious.Footnote ³⁶ Importantly, the fourth Bishop of Salford (1903-1925), Louis Charles Casartelli, although born and raised in Manchester, had Italian parents. Much of what follows is from his extensive personal papers, presently held at the Salford Diocesan Archives. There is no need to recount the life of Bishop Casartelli here, as a fine biography by John Broadley is already available, but it is important to note that, as Broadley explains: ‘Casartelli was a European. His family roots were in Italy; he had mastered several European languages… the happiest days of his life had been spent in Belgium … he spoke of the destructive nature of ill-feeling between nations: “the strong feeling against Germany is a dark spot in European relations and I firmly hope may pass away eventually in France and also in England. International hatred is a deadly disease”’.Footnote ³⁷

It can be observed from Table 1 that, in 1880, there were forty-four European secular priests in the Diocese of Salford, of whom sixteen were German, thirteen were Dutch, and eleven were Belgian, with the remaining four being made up of two Italians, one Swiss and one Austrian. This total was just under a third of the overall number of 155 secular clergy in the diocese.Footnote ³⁸

Table 1. Nationalities of secular priests serving in the diocese of Salford, 1880-1960

During the 1870s, Herbert Vaughan, the second bishop of Salford (1872-1892), had made frequent tours of the continent seeking foreign clergy, to alleviate the shortages in his diocese.Footnote ³⁹ His efforts resulted in large numbers of Dutch and Belgian clergy coming to Lancashire. However, it was the German clergy, refugees from the Kulturkampf, who made up the largest group, perhaps because of Vaughan’s earlier efforts. Salford seems to have been the diocese of choice for many of these exiled priests, at least in the north of England. An examination of the 1880 Catholic Directory of England and Wales, cross-referenced with the respective clergy histories of Leeds, Liverpool and Shrewsbury Dioceses would suggest that in comparison Leeds had six of the exiles, Liverpool had two, and Shrewsbury had none.

Vaughan, however, was under no illusion as to their longevity of tenure, stating in 1877: ‘The greater number have come to us only for a time, and are liable to be called away by their respective bishops, or upon the cessation of the terrible persecution now raging in Germany’.Footnote ⁴⁰ The impact and scale of Bismark’s anti-clericalism is further revealed in the 1875 pastoral letter of the English bishops, which reported that ‘… Two archbishops and five bishops have already been fined and imprisoned. About 1,600 priests have in like manner been taken from their flocks and deprived of liberty. These deeds of oppression are happening week-by-week and day-by-day’.Footnote ⁴¹ Two examples of priests who fled to Salford were Father Peter Maringer and Father John Kaas, both of the Diocese of Trèves; the former served in Salford 1877-1883, and the latter 1878-1881. The Tablet in April 1877 stated that Marringer had been fined and imprisoned in 1873, had his possessions seized in 1874, and was banished from all of Germany in 1875, while Kaas was imprisoned in 1874, and was also banished in 1875.Footnote ⁴² Both returned to Germany in the 1880s when the Iron Chancellor was set aside upon the accession of Wilhelm II as Kaiser.

Bishop Vaughan was an admirer of German culture, so, when he established his new commercial college of St Bede’s at Manchester in 1876 (later the diocesan junior seminary and bishop’s residence), he included French and German language courses as part of the mandatory syllabus.Footnote ⁴³ In addition, in 1886 he opened a branch house at Bonn, where his Manchester students would have the opportunity to spend a year immersed in German culture. After touring the country, Vaughan had been struck by: ‘the superiority of German students over English students in respect of foreign language’.Footnote ⁴⁴ However, ‘St Bede’s on the Rhine’ was a failure, only twenty-seven pupils from Manchester opting to attend over a ten-year period. The scheme was ended in 1895.Footnote ⁴⁵

The impact of this clerical presence can be seen in part through diocesan churches where confessions and other services in foreign languages were offered. The 1914 diocesan almanac demonstrates that of the 128 churches in the diocese, more than a third offered ministry in a language other than English, the largest provision being in French, with fifty churches listed. In second place was German with thirteen churches, then smaller numbers of Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Flemish, Gaelic, Italian, Portuguese, Lithuanian and Polish.Footnote ⁴⁶ The German provision was almost entirely managed by German or Belgian born priests. However, there was no dedicated German Catholic Church, or even a notable consolidated German Catholic community, certainly nothing to rival Ancoats ‘Little Italy’, or the Chorlton-on-Medlock’s ‘Little Ireland’. As Panayi tells us: ‘Only one German Catholic church existed in Britain throughout the course of the nineteenth century – St Bonifacius, established in London in 1809, although other German Catholics may have attended Irish immigrant churches’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Manchester did however have three German Protestant churchesFootnote ⁴⁸ and the Turnverein German Gymnastic Society.Footnote ⁴⁹

The figures in Table 1 show that by 1910 there were only five German priests remaining in Salford. Most of the Kulturkampf refugees had, like Marringer and Kaas, returned home, whilst others had joined dioceses elsewhere in Britain or America. Salford diocese had, however, educated, and ordained, as well as accepting on loan, a small additional number of German priests during the 1890s and 1900s. Examples include Monsignor Hermann Brunning,Footnote ⁵⁰ a native of Munster, who had been rector at St Augustine’s at Lowerhouse near Burnley in 1908, then moved to America in 1912, and Father John Peter Klein, rector at St James the Less at Rawtenstall in 1893. Although the latter continued to be listed as a member of the diocese throughout the war, he had in fact returned to Germany in 1905. By 1914 he was serving as chaplain to the convent at Heisterback.Footnote ⁵¹ Neither would ever return.

Existing sources cannot provide a definitive answer as to whether prior to the war, these foreign nationals were welcomed by Lancastrian clergy and congregations. There is certainly evidence of an individual case of discrimination pertaining to Dean Gustave Saffenreuter, rector at Pendleton, near Salford. Saffenreuter was a native of Coblenz, in the diocese of Triers, and had come to Salford in 1865, long before the Kulturkampf. He founded the mission of St James, Pendleton in 1870. In the early 1890s the dean found himself embroiled in a particularly unpleasant dispute, following the removal from the diocese of his curate, Father Nicholas McCarthy, who had become something of a figurehead in the Irish nationalist movement. The correspondence and newspaper articles suggest that this case was a battleground in the ongoing conflict between English Catholics and Irish nationalists, and that the unjust campaign against Saffenreuter was not motivated by his being German, but rather by his simply not being Irish.Footnote ⁵² Besides this one case, there is no surviving evidence of foreign priests suffering as a result of prejudice in Lancashire before the Great War.

The records show that European clergy were by no means treated as second class. Many would be appointed to important missionary rectorships and senior positions within the diocese. Monsignor Canon Luigi Maglione came to Salford as a refugee of Garibaldi’s persecutions in Italy, and spent more than thirty-years building up the mission of St Joseph at Audley Range, Blackburn. Furthermore, a Dutchman, Rev. Hermann Averdonk, served as rural dean in Bolton during the first two decades of the twentieth century; Father Saffenreuter also served as rural dean; and finally four Belgian priests served successively as Canon Theologians in the Salford Cathedral Chapter: Monsignor Canon Augustus de Clerc, Canon Peter Benoit, Canon Bruno de Splenter, and Canon John Mussley. Most significantly, in 1872, Benoit’s name was considered in the terna as a possible successor to Bishop Turner, as second bishop of Salford.Footnote ⁵³

2.2 The Regulars and Religious

In addition to the secular clergy, many of the regulars and religious based in the diocese also relied heavily on foreign imports. The extent of this can be discerned through cross-referencing between the 1911 Salford Diocesan Almanac and the online 1911 census. Among the male congregations, these included the Premonstratensian Canons at Corpus Christi Priory, Miles Platting, who in 1911 counted three Dutch, two Belgians, and a German among their community. The Franciscans at Gorton had a Belgian member in their community, and the Brothers’ of Charity, who ran Buckley Hall orphanage at Rochdale, had four Belgians and a Dutchman. The Jesuits at Stonyhurst included two Frenchmen and a Belgian, while the Alexian Brothers of Moston, who had come to Lancashire as Kulturkampf refugees, fleeing from Aachen, Germany in 1875,Footnote ⁵⁴ and who ran the Catholic cemetery and St Mary’s care home for elderly men, had five German brothers, and a Belgian. Two of the Germans, Brother Alban Vihs and Brother Melchoir Wimmer will also be considered later in this article.

Although internment did not affect women, applying only to adult males aged between 17 and 55, it is worth touching upon the significant number of European female religious in the Salford Diocese, as a further example of the importance of the Europeans in Catholic life. The Daughters of the Cross and Passion at Bury, who were also Kulturkampf refugees, counted eight Germans and a Belgian among their number in 1911. The Daughters of Jesus at Colne had five French sisters. The Sisters of the Faithful Companions of Jesus, who ran three important girls’ schools in the diocese, had four French and a German sister. The Sisters of the Cenacle at Whalley Range had the largest group, with fourteen French, two Belgians, four Germans, one Swiss and an Italian. The Little Sisters of the Poor, who ran two care homes for the elderly in Manchester, had eighteen French sisters and three Belgians. The Pallottine convent at Rochdale was made up of eleven German sisters. The Sisters of Bon Secours of Salford, who provided home nursing to Catholics had six French sisters. The Sisters of St Joseph, who ran a Catholic hospital in Whalley Range, were entirely French. The Missionary Sisters of St Joseph, who provided domestic services for St Bede’s College, recruited two Dutch nuns, and finally the Sisters’ of Charity, who ran Holly Mount Orphanage at Tottington, had seventeen Belgians and a solitary German.Footnote ⁵⁵

The diocese of Salford was clearly heavily multi-cultural by 1911 and had been dependent on European immigrants for decades; they provided parish priests, ran the orphanages and children’s homes, the hospitals, provided nursing care, and even acted as domestic servants.

3.1 The tightening of the legal framework

Following the outbreak of the Great War, the swift passing of the Defence of the Realm Act and the Aliens Restriction Act demanded the registration and control of all resident aliens, restricting or banning travel, communication, and transfer of assets from and to German and Austrian ex-patriots.Footnote ⁵⁶ Bird explains that:

The British government had been tightening the legal framework surrounding immigration for several years leading up to 1914. Along with growing public animosity to the immigrant populations, and the requirement to convince the general public to support the war, this made it unsurprising that Parliament was able to impose these further Aliens Acts without opposition. It was also a matter of ensuring national security and the safety of the country, ‘The Defence of the Realm Act … [was] to prevent persons communicating with the enemy or obtaining information for that purpose, or any purpose calculated to jeopardise the success of the operations of any of His Majesty’s Forces, or to assist the enemy and to secure the safety of any means of communication, or of railways, docks or harbours’.Footnote ⁵⁸

Although it would be the 1915 Lusitania incident, discussed below, that would cause the main increase in anti-Germanic attitudes in Britain, from as early as October 1914 Germanophobia was already growing. German residents found themselves being boycotted and dismissed from their jobs, with campaigns being launched in newspapers to pressure organisations into complying, ‘In Bradford, in May 1915 the threat of an anti-German strike against twenty-seven Germans employed at Manningham Mills, resulted in their dismissal. Similar events occurred in Newcastle, Sheffield, Oldham, and Ancoats in Manchester’.Footnote ⁵⁹

3.2 Dealing with the threat of German wartime espionage in Great Britain

British intelligence had been watching their German counterparts for some years. By 1913 they had compiled a list of twenty-two suspected operatives who were arrested immediately upon the declaration of war. The list included the afore mentioned London hairdresser, Karl Gustav Ernst, and his counterparts.Footnote ⁶⁰ This initial rounding up destroyed the pre-war German intelligence network in Great Britain, causing them to ‘activate its war intelligence system which was made up primarily of naval officers who were instructed to gather information on the mobilization of the Royal Navy.’Footnote ⁶¹ German covert operations then developed and expanded throughout the war:

British military intelligence was thus facing a threat on the home front. British military and merchant ships were being targeted by German U-boats, which were being passed details of their movements and positions. British agents successfully arrested thirty-one enemy agents, and executed twelve of them by firing squad.Footnote ⁶³ Despite this, Boghardt points out that ‘The majority of agents in Britain were not arrested’Footnote ⁶⁴ and German agents continued working throughout the country. The problem was further exacerbated by the fact German intelligence were not only undertaking espionage, but also sabotage: ‘On 28 November 1914, the Admiralstab issued a circular to Naval attaches and agents explaining that “It is necessary to hire through third parties … agents for arranging explosions on ships bound for enemy countries” … military intelligence established a sabotage department.’Footnote ⁶⁵ The British government thus had to act, the breakdown of the home front could have had grave consequences, as witnessed by the collapse of Russia in 1917. With this potential threat, the government was faced with the immediate question of how to deal with the alien population of Great Britain, however, ‘demands by some politicians and propagandists for internment or expulsion of all enemy nationals … were consistently rejected.’Footnote ⁶⁶

There were many different categories of aliens to consider, even within the enemy alien group: ‘The Home Office considered that on the outbreak of war, ‘There would be great advantage in getting rid at once from the country, of all adult males belonging to the enemy, and capable of creating or taking part in disturbances’.Footnote ⁶⁷ Essentially in the early days of the war, ‘The ostensible aim was to arrest and intern only those thought likely to be a danger to the State. Later the Liberal administration sanctioned the general internment of male enemy aliens of military age… many enemy aliens found themselves interned on totally unfounded suspicions.’Footnote ⁶⁸ For legal purposes, interned enemy aliens were classed as prisoners of war.Footnote ⁶⁹ There were also about 12,000 British born women who had married German or Austrian men and who now found themselves labelled as enemy aliens in their own country.Footnote ⁷⁰ In addition, there were: ‘Czechs, Poles and members of the Ottoman subject races, many of whom had strong nationalist reasons for opposing the countries of which they were subjects’; they saw themselves as victims of German or Turkish aggression, and understandably strenuously objected to being associated with those nations.Footnote ⁷¹

The largest prisoner of war camp in the north-west of England was established at the Cheshire village of Handforth, a few miles from Manchester. Many of the interned alien population would be sent here. One local newspaper described the camp as follows:

In fact, it was May 1915 before mass-incarceration began. This was instigated by the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by a German U-Boat, on 7 May 1915, with massive civilian loss of life.Footnote ⁷³ This incident saw open hostility explode into violence, with anti-German riots across the country. Panayi tells us: ‘the worst violence occurred in major cities, including Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and, particularly London … German shops had their windows smashed, virtually everywhere’.Footnote ⁷⁴ In May 1915 the Manchester Courier reported:

The riots were stoked up by newspaper placards inciting people to attack Germans, and even newspaper headlines calling for vendettas against them.Footnote ⁷⁶ Within a month of the Lusitania incident: ‘about 13,000 enemy aliens had been interned … about 10,000 had been repatriated.’Footnote ⁷⁷ The riots during the war years were not however limited just to Germans: similar uprisings took place against Chinese and Belgian residents in 1916 and Russian residents in 1917.Footnote ⁷⁸

At the beginning of the war, the government permitted any enemy alien, except men of military age, which for Germans was defined as 17 to 55 inclusive, and for Austrians as 18 to 50,Footnote ⁷⁹ to opt for repatriation to their own country. By the time of the signing of the armistice only 6,840 civilians had been repatriated. However following the end of the war, the government then began mass deportations:

3.3 Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges

The willingness of the general population to not just accept the restrictions on their foreign neighbours and colleagues, but also to participate in persecutions, was encouraged via official propaganda. From the outset of hostilities, the British government began a concerted and planned effort to convince people of the justification for the war, through films, posters, newspapers, and radio broadcasts. It was to be the first war in which the state intentionally used a propaganda campaign against the population. A separate government department, the British War Propaganda Bureau, which came to be known as Wellington House, was established in August 1914. Its first major publication was the Report on Alleged German Outrages, published 12 May 1915, shortly after the sinking of the Lusitania and amid widespread anti-German rioting. The report’s committee was investigating ‘charges that German soldiers, either directed or condoned by their officers, had been guilty of widespread atrocities in Belgium’.Footnote ⁸¹ Terence Wilson concluded that while ‘The Bryce committee did not produce a dishonest or fraudulent report, in the sense that it reached conclusions which the evidence had shown to be untrue, what it did do was carefully to avoid verifying the evidence’.Footnote ⁸² An example of atrocity propaganda was the now notorious claim that Germany was operating corpse factories, boiling down the remains of allied soldiers into oils and pig fodder. Bird argues that ‘The Prime Minister was clearly aware of the propaganda value of the aliens issues, in fostering hatred of the enemy and helping to galvanise the support of a weary nation for the war effort’.Footnote ⁸³

The most common reason given for the censorship and the morally questionable use of propaganda, was, once again national security. Aeschylus wrote: ‘In war, truth is the first casualty’, alluding to the fact that whenever a state commences warfare, the primary requirement on the home front is to keep the population loyal to the cause, and to their country’s allies, and enthusiastic in its hatred for the enemy. Thus, the propaganda machine was whipping up mass Germanophobia across the country, which inevitably impacted the Catholic community.

‘The outbreak of war was accompanied by an outburst of British paranoia over German espionage … up to 400 persons daily offered information on German spies to the London police.’Footnote ⁸⁴ The Daily Mail for example advised in 1914 that: ‘Every German, young or old, is a potential spy … the only safe plan is to arrest and deport every German. No excuse should be accepted … while Britain and Germany are at war, the only safe place for Germans is a concentration camp.Footnote ⁸⁵ As mentioned above, the proliferation of ‘scare literature’ had already intensified public paranoia, related to the alien threat. French suggests that ‘a gullible public was beginning to mistake fiction for fact’.Footnote ⁸⁶

Another example of anti-German attitudes can be seen in the Catholic church, with Robert Bradley, a Salford diocesan church student and the son of a Salford Catholic doctor. At the outbreak of war Bradley was in his final year studying for the priesthood at St Cuthbert’s College, Ushaw. He initially applied for leave of absence from his studies in order that he could join-up, but this request was turned down by Bishop Casartelli.Footnote ⁸⁷ In February 1915 he decided to go ahead anyway. In a letter written back to his alma mater, St Bede’s College, Manchester, he stated: ‘the teachings of Germany were in their essence anti-Christian and thus contrary to the interests of mankind as a whole’. Bradley made it clear that his personal mission was to kill as many Germans as possible: for him the war was a moral crusade.Footnote ⁸⁸ Second Lieutenant Robert Bradley was killed in Mesopotamia in January 1917.

4.1 Germans and Austrians

The alien control measures presented immediate difficulties for some of the religious congregations whose ‘mother houses’ were based in these countries, in particular the Alexian Brothers, the Daughters of the Cross, and the Pallottine Sisters. The latter became financially destitute due to the severing of ties with Limburg in Germany. However, it is noted in their history that the Catholic community of Rochdale rallied round them in their time of need.Footnote ⁸⁹

Broadley observes that Bishop Casartelli was: ‘torn by what was going on around him. He was undoubtedly patriotic and encouraged Catholics to “play their part” as much as any section of the community. At the same time, he was conscious of the number of “aliens” who were living in Manchester and was eager that they should not be subjected to abuse’.Footnote ⁹⁰ During the month of the sinking of the Lusitania, Casartelli began developing grave concerns for churches and religious houses staffed by Germans and Austrians, leading him to take various actions to move and protect any vulnerable persons in his charge, where he was able.Footnote ⁹¹

There were five secular priests from enemy nations in the diocese of Salford in August 1914. Each suffered a very different experience of the war. Father Franz Reichart, rector at St Mary, Heaton Norris, near Stockport, and Father Joseph Dohmen, curate at St Mary, Islington, Blackburn, were trapped on the continent. They had both gone there to visit family prior to the declaration of war and were unable to return. In charge at Heaton Norris since 1883, Reichart had fled as a refugee from Germany as a young student and had been ordained for the diocese in 1876. He had gone to Austria on holiday in July 1914, but as a naturalised British subject, the Austrian authorities labelled him an alien and because of his Austrian birth, the British authorities attached to him the same label. He effectively became stateless.Footnote ⁹²

Initially, when it became clear Reichart could not return, Casartelli, thinking that the war would not last long, sent Dean John Hennessey to Heaton Norris as a temporary administrator, advising him: ‘that it would be highly objectionable, besides being unfair both to them [the domestic staff] and to the rector, to make any change during his enforced exile, the duration of which may be longer or shorter’.Footnote ⁹³ By July 1915, Casartelli, forced to face the probability that Reichart would not be returning in the immediate future, wrote to entreat him to resign. He later reassured him that although he had: ‘appointed Fr Henshaw, rector of Heaton Norris in your place; when you return, I trust you will be able to organise a separate mission [at] Heaton Mersey’.Footnote ⁹⁴ However, Fr Reichart would never return to the diocese. In August 1918, he wrote poignantly to his former congregation, through Casartelli:

The war ended three months later and, in spring 1919, having set his affairs in order in Austria, Fr Reichart prepared to return to the diocese. He seems to have got no further than Berne, Switzerland where the British legation turned him back and refused to allow him passage. Reichart returned to Austria and settled back in Schloss Hofen, Lochan, Vorarlberg. The people of Stockport, after hearing of his situation, raised a collection of £400, the equivalent of more than £11,000 today.^{Footnote 96} The headmistress of St Mary’s Infants’ School travelled to the continent to present this gift to him in June 1920.Footnote ⁹⁷ However, three months later, 10 September 1920, just a few weeks before his seventieth birthday, Fr Reichart suddenly died.

Fr Dohmen, who was ordained in 1901 and had served various curacies in the diocese prior to the war, also never returned to Salford. Casartelli requested that he be incardinated into the Diocese of Munich in 1921, stating to the bishop there: ‘The Rev Joseph Dohmen: an excellent priest of this diocese left us some time before the war to return to his native Germany. It was of course impossible for him to return during the war, and at the present moment, I regret to say that owing to the still disturbed state of public feeling, it would be undesirable and unwise for him to return to this country’.Footnote ⁹⁸ There is no further record of him after this date.

Two other German priests, although still resident in Manchester, were not considered candidates for internment under the Aliens Acts. Thirty-eight-year-old Father Aloysius Foltin, rector at St Casimir, Collyhurst, was chaplain to Manchester’s East European population, and forty-six-year-old Father Charles Weirz was rector at St Joseph, Longsight. The former was born in GleiwitzFootnote ⁹⁹ in 1876 and was ordained in 1899, coming to England initially as a member of the Congregation of Missionaries of Divine Love, a group who had responsibility for the London Polish community. Born in Cologne in 1897, Fr. Weirz had been naturalised as a British subject in February 1909 and was appointed to Longsight in August 1910. In 1903, Foltin, having quarrelled with his congregation, came to Manchester, living initially at St Chad’s, Cheetham Hill, prior to the establishment of St Casimir’s. He was incardinated into the diocese in 1911.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Both men were subject to a Controlled Movement Order, and were expected to present themselves daily at their local police station.

Foltin took great offence at this, considering himself to be a Pole: ‘although by accident of birth [he was born] in the part of Poland annexed (and I may add, persecuted for long) by Prussia, he is technically a German Subject’.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Casartelli tried to reason with him: ‘… you take too serious a view of the case in talking about insult to the clergy, indignity, treating as a criminal etc … in your case the local police are doing all they can to make matters easier’.Footnote ¹⁰² It is with Foltin, however, that we see the first example of anti-German prejudice among the English clergy of the diocese. In 1915 Casartelli was forced to issue the following rebuke to Dean Bradley of St Edmund, Miles Platting: ‘I am unpleasantly surprised to learn that you have been making enquiries concerning Fr Foltin from the police. It seems to me extraordinary that one priest should discuss the affairs of his fellow priest with the police authorities, thereby casting suspicion upon him and possibly involving him in serious trouble’.Footnote ¹⁰³

Despite the restrictions, both Foltin and Weirz were allowed to remain working at their churches during the war. In the 1920s their situations changed. Weirz was moved in 1922 to become parish priest at St Vincent de Paul, Openshaw, although it is not clear if this move was related to his nationality, and he died there in 1927.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ It is noted that Foltin’s behaviour became increasingly volatile during the 1920s, although no specifics are mentioned. He was asked by Bishop Henshaw to return to Poland in 1930 and he died there in September 1935.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

There were additionally two priests of Germanic descent serving with the Salford diocese. Father John Moses Drescher and Father Peter Groebel were both British nationals having been born in the country but bore distinctively Germanic names. Father Drescher’s German born paternal grandparents had emigrated to Britain in the 1830s, while Father Groebel’s Prussian born parents had moved to London in the 1860s. Father Groebel had joined the Royal Navy as a military chaplain in 1903, seeing action in China during the Boxer Rebellion, he continued in service into the Great War, in which he was wounded in action and died 1 January 1917 at the age of 51.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Father Drescher also served in the war, enlisting as chaplain in 1914.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

The experience of the Rev. Dr. Hermann Hohn is perhaps the most significant. Born at Buhlingenin in 1872 and ordained in 1901, from 1911 he had resided at St Bede’s College as Bishop Casartelli’s private secretary. Dr. Hohn subsequently moved into the Convent of the Good Shepherd at Blackley, North Manchester, 26 May 1915, after Casartelli had become increasingly fearful for his safety following the anti-German riots.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Realising that internment as an enemy-alien was a distinct possibility, Casartelli petitioned the Chief Constable of Lancashire and the Lord Mayor of Manchester that the young priest be allowed to be privately interned within the convent’s precincts.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Despite the bishop’s entreaties, armed police arrived at the convent on 30 June. After being granted access, they proceeded to seize Father Hohn on charges of treason. The nuns immediately telephoned CasartelliFootnote ¹¹⁰ and the bishop spent the next few days attempting to track down his priest, noting his frustrations at one point in his diary: ‘no fresh news of Dr Hohn, where is he?.’Footnote ¹¹¹ Hohn was eventually traced to the camp at Handforth. Casartelli, after applying diplomatic pressure, gained special permission to visit. He visited on 5 July, when he found Hohn incarcerated alongside Father Gabriel Bertram CRP, and Brother Alban VihsFootnote ¹¹² (see 1.2). Casartelli was so shocked at the conditions he found, that he wrote at once to his Vicar General, Mgr O’Kelly:

Casartelli immediately tried to ascertain why Hohn had been arrested, and to negotiate his release. He sent pleas for assistance to Cardinal BourneFootnote ¹¹⁴ and to the Home Office. However, when the charges were uncovered, he was shocked to find that they had originated with one of his own priests, and a prominent member of Lancashire’s Catholic gentry. Dr Hohn was being charged with ‘gloating’ over the sinking of the Lusitania, a charge which he emphatically denied. The accusation came from the small Lancashire village of Clayton-le-Moors, where the rector, Fr John Crombleholme, and the Lord of the Manor, Captain Richard Trappes-Lomax, had reported him to the authorities. Casartelli wrote a strongly worded letter to Crombleholme, berating him for his perfidy:

With the help of Cardinal Bourne and the Irish Nationalist M.P. John Mooney, Hohn’s release was secured, and he returned to the convent on 29 July, after nearly a full month of internment.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Hohn spent the rest of the war living with the nuns. Being confined in a convent with very little work, in a role usually held by elderly or infirm clergy, Hohn may have felt bored. Boredom was an issue identified in most internment camps across the country, where doctors began to notice a condition which they named ‘Barbed wire psychosis … [or] barbed wire fever’,Footnote ¹¹⁷ caused by the fact that: ‘the majority of internees faced a life in which the only constant factors were boredom, frustration and apathy’,Footnote ¹¹⁸ Hohn, however, enjoyed a more comfortable life at the convent than those men still resident in the camps, of whom Bird notes that: ‘Another winter of internment under the prevailing conditions, would probably mean for many men ruined health for life… the mental and physical condition of internees … undermining prisoners’ nerves.’Footnote ¹¹⁹

In October 1918, Casartelli asked that Hohn could be allowed to act as chaplain to German Prisoners of War in Manchester but the Home Office bluntly refused.Footnote ¹²⁰ Following the Armistice, Hohn faced forced repatriation and left England for a period of work at the Stiftskirche, Bonn.Footnote ¹²¹ In 1922, he petitioned Bishop Casartelli to allow him to return to the diocese. The subsequent correspondence between the bishop and Mgr O’Kelly VG suggests a certain level of doubt about the advisability of his return: ‘It looks like we must make up our minds to let him [Hohn] come back to the diocese, but he evidently won’t be content with a curacy, yet where can he be sent?’.Footnote ¹²² The debate rumbled on until late 1923, when Casartelli wrote: ‘It seems he [Hohn] will have to be given a quiet parish, in some not very conspicuous place, for I greatly fear there will still be some ill-feeling among both the clergy and laity with regard to his nationality. He must be very patient’.Footnote ¹²³ By coincidence, due to the early retirement of Father Crombleholme, the one parish which was available was Clayton-le-Moors—the scene of the attacks upon him eight years earlier. However, the bishop sensibly moved Father Archibald Bartlett from St Edward’s Church, Lees, near Oldham, into Clayton-le-Moors, and sent Hohn to Lees in his place.

The case of Father Bertram CRP, who was in Handforth Camp with Dr Hohn, differed from the others. He was vaguely accused by Casartelli of ‘agitating’, although it is not clear if he was chafing at his incarceration or expressing pro-German sentiments.Footnote ¹²⁴ Bertram remained in the Handforth Camp until 1916, when, upon arranging his release, the Premonstratensian Canons agreed with the repatriation committee that he be allowed to move to their motherhouse at Tongerlo Abbey, Belgium. He remained there until his death in 1930.Footnote ¹²⁵

Regarding the Alexian Brothers, four members of the English province were interned, three from Twyford Abbey, Ealing, and the aforementioned Brother Vihs, who had been interned with Hohn and Bertram at Handforth. There was, however, also Brother Melchior Wimmer, who appears to have escaped internment. Vihs ended up in the Knockaloe camp on the Isle of Man.Footnote ¹²⁶ After the war he returned to the community, and in 1933 became superior of the new house based at St Mary’s Cemetery, Wardley, in charge of two other German brothers, Serenus Engel and Ephrem Vogel.Footnote ¹²⁷ Around the same time, Brother Wimmer became superior of the house caring for St Joseph’s Cemetery, Moston. With the outbreak of the Second World War, attempts were made to conscript him into the German army, and he was interned for a second time. After the war he chose to return to Germany where he became provincial superior in 1951. In 1952 he transferred to Chicago, where he became superior general, and died there in March 1962.Footnote ¹²⁸ It is very likely that the German brothers in the diocese were deliberately assigned to the cemetery communities rather than to the nursing homes, to avoid xenophobic discrimination. Importantly, the anti-alien sentiment did not end with the conclusion of the war, in fact in many areas it intensified, caused by returning soldiers finding foreigners doing their jobs. The Seaport Riots of 1919 are an example of this, which included disturbances in the Salford Docks in April.

An interesting comparison might be drawn with the Benedictine community at Buckfast Abbey, Devon. The abbey had been re-established in 1880 by monks fleeing persecution in Europe. In 1911 there was a community of fifty-four men, made up of thirteen priests, twenty-three ecclesiastical students and fifty-four lay brothers. Forty-four were German, six were French, and three were English, with one Maltese brother. In addition, the Abbey guesthouse was run by three German ladies. With most of the men being of an age which rendered them liable for internment, a private arrangement was agreed with the Home Office. The entire forty-five-acre precinct of the Abbey could be designated as an internment camp, meaning that the community could remain in residence and continue with their farming, beekeeping and monastic life.Footnote ¹²⁹

4.2 The Belgians

The German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 was the pretext for Britain’s declaration of war, as the country was treaty-bound to protect Belgian neutrality. On 19 August, German forces captured the city of Louvain, looting and burning the famous Catholic university where Bishop Casartelli had himself been educated.Footnote ¹³⁰ Shortly afterwards Belgian refugees, fleeing from the German invasion of their homeland, began arriving on British shores.

The Catholic community in the diocese of Salford rallied round to provide and care for these Belgians: hostels were set up, boarding schools provided accommodation, and specific Belgian chaplains were appointed. The December edition of the diocesan magazine, The Harvest, reported these efforts, and included photographs of: ‘refugees driven from their convent in Brussels at ten minutes’ notice. They have now found a home with the Sisters’ of Charity, Victoria Park, where everything is being done to dispel their homesickness and the depression which all feel at being driven from their homeland.’ Bishop Casartelli even handed over his private villa to the Catholic Women’s League for housing refugees.Footnote ¹³² Kieran Taylor’s research shows that ‘Between 1914 and 1918 around 250,000 Belgian refugees sought safety in Britain … the relief of refugees was regarded as a valid contribution to the home front … this philanthropic feeling was politically significant.’ Taylor also notes the significant role of the Catholic church as a distributor of aid.Footnote ¹³³

Amongst the 1914 refugees who came to Lancashire were two young Belgian clergymen. Joseph Vanderhaege, a sub-deacon, arrived in January 1915 and was ordained at Salford Cathedral in August 1915, being then appointed curate at St Mary, Haslingden.Footnote ¹³⁴ Father Helaire Tanghe was appointed curate at St Alban, Blackburn, although nothing more is known about him. Another young Belgian priest, twenty-eight-year-old Father René Van Hissenhoven, a former protegee of the bishop, who had been ordained in 1913, was serving as curate to Salford Cathedral. The other three Belgian priests remaining in Salford were older and had been serving in the diocese since the nineteenth century. These were: Fathers Edward de Pauw, aged sixty-six, chaplain at Holly Mount Convent, Tottington, Anthony Van der Beek, aged fifty-four, rector at Pleasington Priory; and Alphonsus Van Tomme, aged fifty-three, rector at St John the Baptist, Padiham.

In 1916, the Belgian government passed a law requiring expatriates to present themselves for military conscription. No exemption was made for Catholic priests. Interestingly, the German occupying authorities regarded priests as the soul of the Belgian resistance, and Baron Von der Lancken stated that it would be an injustice to give any privilege to clergy.Footnote ¹³⁵ Bishop Casartelli wrote in August 1916: ‘The new Belgian military law is threatening one or two Belgian priests in my diocese … I am given to understand that if a Belgian priest is acting as chaplain in care of Belgian refugees in this country, he would be exempted’.Footnote ¹³⁶ Father Vanderhagge was subsequently transferred to St Mary, Horwich in August 1916: ‘at a moment’s notice … as chaplain to the Belgians in Horwich, Turton and Bolton districts, in order to save him from conscription.Footnote ¹³⁷

Meanwhile, Father Hissenhoven wished to be appointed as a military chaplain. Casartelli wrote in August 1916 to Monsignor Bidwell of Westminster who was responsible for commissioning military chaplains: ‘Rev. Rene Van Hissenhoven, a Belgian priest at my cathedral, desires to offer himself as C.F. to the British army for the war. Though a native of Antwerp and of a Belgian father, his mother is a Manchester lady, and he speaks English from childhood’.Footnote ¹³⁸ Casartelli seems to have become irate by Bidwell’s inertia, as well as the resistance of the war office, who, it was recorded:

This later plea seems to have been more successful. It was recorded in June 1917 that:

After the war, Van Hissenhoven joined the White Fathers and travelled to Africa to undertake missionary work. He died in the Congo in 1942 at the age of 53. Tanghe was recalled to the Diocese of Bruges in November 1918, but his fate is unknown; reference to Vanderhaege ceases after 1920 when he left Horwich and it must be assumed that he also returned to his native land.Footnote ¹⁴¹

4.3 Italians

Italy had originally formed an alliance with Germany and Austria, but declared neutrality in August 1914, before signing the Treaty of London. They joined the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary in April 1915. In 1917, a year after the Belgian government had begun efforts to conscript their ex-patriates, the Italian government, desperate for men following repeated military disasters, followed suit. This would once again include priests living and working abroad. At this time there were only two Italian priests in the diocese, Father Gaetano Fracassi, rector of St Joseph, Stacksteads, and Father Michael Pappalardo, rector of St Alban, Ancoats. Pappalardo was a native of Minori, Amalfi, who had been ordained in 1893, and had served at Ancoats since 1917. Although only aged forty-eight, he was quite infirm and was therefore exempt. Fracassi, however, although not much younger at forty, was conscripted. A native of Pescarolo, Cremona, he had been ordained in 1898, and had been rector at Stacksteads since 1913. In 1917 he was ordered to attend a conscription board. Casartelli noted: ‘Fr Fracassi has been summoned by the Italian authorities to undergo a medical examination in Liverpool, and was rejected on medical grounds. For the present, therefore he seems to be safe.’Footnote ¹⁴² This optimism was premature, as, over the following months, Casartelli wrote to the Italian ambassador to try and keep him out of the army.Footnote ¹⁴³ A tribunal was held at Bacup in November 1917 to determine if Fracassi could be exempt from conscription. Casartelli championed his cause: ‘I strongly recommend the application of Rev. Gaetano Fracassi for exemption, on the grounds of his work being one of national importance.’Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Although this tribunal found in his favour, by May 1918 Fracassi was once more under threat, but Casartelli noted: ‘Fr Fracassi is quite confident that he is safe and will be ‘combed’ out in spite of the ambassador’s letter’.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Ultimately, he was only saved by the armistice.

The attitude of the Belgian and Italian governments towards their ex-patriot nationals in Catholic ministry is an interesting footnote. Their refusal to exclude priests and religious from military conscription suggests elements of anti-Catholicism and even violent state anti-clericalism. Since its unification in 1872, the Italian Liberal government had sought to marginalise the influence of the Vatican and could be belligerently secular. Even Belgium, which, prior to 1914, had been very pro-Catholic, refused to exempt Catholic priests from military service.