Jozef-Ernest van Roey was born in Vorselaar, as the first of the five children of Stanislas and Anna-Maria van Roey. His siblings were named Bernadette, Louis, Véronique, and Stephanie. He was baptized the same day of his birth in the parish church of Vorselaar. Van Roey studied under the Jesuits in Vorselaar before entering Saint-Joseph School in Herentals in 1885. He graduated in 1892, whence he entered the minor seminary in Mechelen. From 1894 to 1897, he studied theology at the Major Seminary of Mechelen. He was ordained to the priesthood by CardinalPierre-Lambert Goossens on 18 September 1897. Van Roey then furthered his studies at the University of Louvain, from where he obtained his doctorate in theology and the habilitation in 1903. He taught at the Collège Americaine from 1901 to 1905, and at the University of Louvain from 1905 to 1907. During this time, Van Roey also became a friend of Columba Marmion, OSB, who would later be beatified in 2000. On 19 May 1907, he was made an honorarycanon of the metropolitanchapter of Mechelen. He served as vicar general of the city from 30 September 1907 to 1925, and was raised to the rank of Domestic Prelate of His Holiness on 2 April 1909. Van Roey participated in the Conversations of Mechelen, a series of ecumenical dialogues between clergymen from the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches hosted by Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier, from 1921 to 1926, but for which he was less supportive. He became secretary of the diocesan synod in 1924, and a protonotary apostolic on 11 February 1925. On 12 March 1926, Van Roey was appointed Archbishop of Mechelen, and thus Primate of Belgium, by Pope Pius XI. He received his episcopal consecration on the following 25 April from Archbishop Clemente Micara, with Bishops Gustave-Joseph Waffelaert and Gaston-Antoine Rasneur serving as co-consecrators, in the Cathedral of Mechelen. Pius XI created him Cardinal Priest of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in the consistory of 20 June 1927. The Belgian primate served as papal legate to the centennial celebration of the University of Louvain four days later, on 24 June. In February 1931, he denounced cremation, declaring, "That funeral honors should be paid to a cremated corpse is a defiance of Catholic conscience which objects to cremation...Any funeral is meaningless after destruction of the body by burning".
Nazi period
The Cardinal was deeply opposed to Nazi Germany, and once said, "With Germany we step many degrees downward and reach the lowest possible depths. We have a duty of conscience to combat and to strive for the defeat of these dangers...Reason and good sense both direct us towards confidence, towards resistance". In 1937, Van Roey condemned Rexism as "a danger to the country and the Church" and issued a precautionary condemnation of anyone who cast a blank ballot, much to the anger of Adolf Hitler. Although some saw this as an unwarranted ecclesiastical entrance into the political sphere, the Cardinal defended himself by saying, "The hierarchic authority is perfectly entitled to pronounce on any political party or political movement in so far as that party or movement opposes religious well-being or the precepts of Christian morals", a statement which earned the support of Pope Pius. Cardinal van Roey intervened with the authorities to rescue Jews from the Nazis, and encouraged various institutions to aid Jewish children. One of his acts of rescue was to open a geriatric centre in which Jews were housed, at which kosher Jewish cooks would be required who could therefore be given special passes protecting them from deportation. On 24 September 1942 Cardinal Van Roey and Queen Elizabeth both intervened with the German authorities in Brussels after the arrest of six leading members of the Jewish community. As a result, five were released. The sixth, Edward Rotbel, Secretary of the Belgian Jewish Community, was a Hungarian citizen, and could not be saved from deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
