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Papen went to Rome on 8 April. Outgoing Centre Party chair Ludwig Kaas, who arrived in Rome shortly before him, negotiated a draft with him on behalf of Pacelli. The concordat prolonged Kaas' stay in Rome, leaving his party without a chairman; he resigned his post on 5 May, and the party elected [[Heinrich Brüning]] under increasing pressure from the Nazi campaign of [[Gleichschaltung]]. The bishops saw a 30 May 1933 draft as they assembled for a joint meeting of the Fulda (led by [[Breslau]]'s Cardinal Bertram) and Bavarian conferences (led by Munich's [[Michael von Faulhaber]]). {{Interlanguage link multi|Wilhelm Berning|de|3=Hermann Wilhelm Berning}} of [[Osnabrück]] and Archbishop [[Conrad Grober]] of [[Freiburg]] presented the document to the bishops.<ref name="Krieg p.6">Krieg p. 6</ref> Weeks of escalating anti-Catholic violence had preceded the conference, and many bishops feared for the safety of the church if Hitler's demands were not met.<ref>Paul O'Shea; A Cross Too Heavy; Rosenberg Publishing; p. 234 {{ISBN|978-1-877058-71-4}}</ref> The strongest critics of the concordat were [[Cologne]]'s Cardinal [[Karl Schulte]] and [[Eichstätt]]'s Bishop [[Konrad von Preysing]]. They noted that the Enabling Act established a quasi-dictatorship, and the church lacked legal recourse if Hitler decided to disregard the concordat.<ref name="Krieg p.6"/> The bishops approved the draft, and delegated Grober to present their concerns to Pacelli and Kaas.
On 14 July 1933, the Weimar government accepted the Reichskonkordat. It was signed six days later by Pacelli for the Vatican and von Papen for Germany; Hindenburg then signed, and it was ratified in September. Article 16 required bishops to take an oath of loyalty to the state; Article 31 acknowledged that although the church would continue to sponsor charitable organisations, it would not support political organisations or causes. Article 32 gave Hitler what he wanted: the exclusion of clergy and members of religious orders from politics. According to [[Guenter Lewy]], however, members of the clergy could theoretically join (or remain) in the Nazi Party without violating church discipline: "An ordinance of the Holy See forbidding priests to be members of a political party was never an issue; ... the movement sustaining the state cannot be equated with the political parties of the parliamentary multi-party state in the sense of Article 32."<ref>Lewy, pp. 84–85</ref><ref>Lewy, p. 84</ref> The government banned new political parties, turning Germany into a one-party state.
The Reichskonkordat signified international acceptance of Hitler]]'s government.<ref>{{cite book |last=Berenbaum |first=Michael |title=The World Must Know |page=40}}{{full citation needed|date=March 2020}}</ref> Robert Ventresca wrote that it left German Catholics with no "meaningful electoral opposition to the Nazis", and the "benefits and vaunted diplomatic entente [of the Reichskonkordat] with the German state were neither clear nor certain".<ref name="the-tls.co.uk" /> According to Paul O'Shea, Hitler had a "blatant disregard" for the agreement; its signing was, to him, the first step in the "gradual suppression of the Catholic Church in Germany".<ref>Paul O'Shea; A Cross Too Heavy; Rosenberg Publishing; pp. 234–35 {{ISBN|978-1-877058-71-4}}</ref> Hitler said in 1942 that he saw the Reichskonkordat as obsolete, intended to abolish it after the war, and hesitated to withdraw Germany's representative from the Vatican only for "military reasons connected with the war".<ref name="Hitler p.551-556">"A Hungarian Request" in Cameron and Stevens, ''Hitler's Table Talk: 1941–1944''. Enigma Books, pp. 551–56</ref> Pope Pius XI issued ''[[Mit brennender Sorge]]'', his 1937 encyclical, when Nazi treaty violations escalated to physical violence.<ref>Coppa132</ref><ref>Rhodes197"Rhodes, p. 197</ref>
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