Franz Justus Rarkowski

Franz Justus Rarkowski, S.M. (June 8, 1873 – February 9, 1950 ) was the Catholic military bishop of Nazi Germany. The existence of such a role was provided for by the Reichskonkordat, and Rarkowski had been acting head of the military chaplaincy since 1929, before he was officially consecrated on February 29, 1938, as episcopus castrensis.

The first draft of the Apostolic Brief to regulate the military chaplaincy was given to the German government on June 26, 1934.

Biography Rarkowski was born in Allenstein, East Prussia (today Olsztyn, Poland). Rarkowski was named acting army bishop in August 1936. In an October 4, 1940, pastoral letter, Rarkowski argued that Germany was "waging a just war" and praised German Catholic soldiers for the "Christian attitude they have maintained on the field of battle".

There were 560 Catholic military chaplains in Nazi Germany at the outbreak of World War II. Hermann Göring had forbidden such chaplains in the air force, but the other branches of the military were generally supportive of the institution.

After the remilitarisation of West Germany in 1955, when the military vicarate was re-established, it was independent of the army authorities; Pius XII appointed Cardinal Josef Wendel of Munich as new military ordinariate for West Germany. In communist East Germany there was no established military chaplaincy.