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HITLER DENOUNCED BY NEW i i YORK CATHOLIC BISHOP j NEW YORK, N. Y., April 21. The Nazi government of Chancellor Adolf Hitler was assailed yesterday in a pastoral letter of Bishop Stephen J. Donohue of the Catholic archdiocese of New York for its organized, insidious persecution of religious groups. Speaking out for the first time against the religious outrages charged to the Hitler government, the bishop announced in his letter to be read in all Catholic churches of the diocese tomorrow that a collection will be taken at each mass to aid the Catholic refugees from Germany. The pastoral letter read in part: "For the past five years the Catholic Church and other religious bodies have been the vic-time of a well organized and insidious persecution under the present Nazi regime of the German government. Accused of crimes and calumnies which were as false as they were preposterous . . . cardinals and bishops of the church have been publicly insulted, hundreds of priests and religious persons have been subjected to the most cruel humilia-l tions, and Catholic laymen of every walk of life have been persecuted and exiled because they dared to profess their faith in God and love of their church. Thousands of nuns, who had devoted their lives and energies to the care of the sick and education of the youth, have been systematically deprived of their institutions and means of livelihood and now face starvation together with loss of their convents and homes. To this panorama of adversities and distress, we must add the pathetic and pitiful plight of 200,000 non-Aryan converts to the Catholic faith, together with their innocent Catholic chil-! drcn who, by one ruthless sweep of Nazi law, have been ordered out of house and homeland and now seek shelter and refuge in countries willing to accept and harbor them."
