The German Catholics were no less zealous than their Protestant compatriots. Although for centuries Italian and French members of the Franciscan order had been preëminent in Catholic missions in Turkey, there was a marked tendency during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth for German members of other religious orders to take an interest in the Near East. This may have been merely the result of a general increase in missionary activity connected with the increasing imperial activities of the German Government. It may have been due to the announced intention of the German Foreign Office to protect Christian missions and missionaries and to the vigorous fulfilment of that promise after the murder of two German Catholic priests in the Chinese province of Shantung. It may have been a natural consequence of the fact that the Prefect of the Propaganda from 1892–1902 was a famous German cardinal.[24] In any event, under the guiding ægis of the _Palästinaverein_, a society for the promotion of Catholic missions in the Holy Land, German Lazarists, Benedictines, and Carmelites established and maintained schools, hospitals, and dispensaries, as well as churches, in Syria and Palestine.[25] Even Jewish religious interests in Palestine promoted Teutonic peaceful penetration in Turkey. As part of the Zionist activities of _L’Alliance Israelite Universelle_, agricultural colonies were founded by German Jews in the vicinity of Jaffa, Jerusalem, and Haifa. These colonists appeared to be proud of their German nationality and were an integral part of the German community in the Holy Land.[26] The German Government had no intention of overlooking the political possibilities of this religious penetration. Promotion of missionary activities might be made to serve a twofold purpose: first, to win the support, in domestic politics, of those interested in the propagation of their faith in foreign lands—more particularly to hold the loyalty of the Catholic Centre party; second, to further one other means of strengthening the bonds between Germany and the Ottoman Empire.