 As part of the campaign against the Catholic Church, hundreds of monasteries in Germany and Austria were confiscated by the Gestapo and their occupants were expelled.In 1941 the Catholic Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Graf von Galen, publicly protested against this persecution and against Action T4, the Nazi involuntary euthanasia programme under which the mentally ill, physically deformed, and incurably sick were to be killed.In a series of sermons that received international attention, he criticised the programme as illegal and immoral.