“The non-Christian secular power, even if it have no religion at all, is an evil, it is of the devil, and it is the theocracy of evil. If we are forced to undergo this misfortune and shame, the misfortune and shame, the misfortune and shame will be greater still for the world than for ourselves. We can survive it by the grace of God, and we alone can help the world survive it. But to seek actively, or to establish with our own hands, a government that would be atheistic in principle - to consecrate a thing so vile and absurd - would be a betrayal of mankind. Mankind would make us render an account before God. It would accuse us of having extinguished the light and of having been the accomplishes of that darkness which is the shadow of death.”