taking comfort from the fact that the papacy would have little say in the outcome.41
Cardinal Bertram may have been the first to suggest the appointment of Ratti as ecclesiastical commissioner for the plebiscite to lend the appearance of clerical decorum and integrity to the rowdy contest in Silesia. Ratti did not welcome his nomination to this largely honorific title that combined high visibility with a minimum of true authority. Indeed, the proposal was a bad idea for so many reasons that at first neither Cardinal Gasparri nor the Allied overseers of the vote saw much merit in it, but in the end the Vatican could not resist accepting even so modest an opportunity to escape its galling diplomatic isolation, and so sought and eventually procured the post for its reluctant emissary in March 1920.42
From the start, the Silesian duty caused Ratti nothing but trouble. In the first place, he entered office under the general suspicion that he could not help but be partial to Poland, the country of his nunciature. Warsaw surely hoped so, and lobbied eagerly to see that he got the job, with some clout to go with it. Once he was installed, Poland looked to him as an advocate, while German opinion regarded him as an enemy. Both sides misread their man: in fact, Ratti shared Gasparri’s preference for minimizing German losses in Silesia.43 He observed careful neutrality, and urged evenhanded restraint and civility in his public statements. These policies provoked grumblings of disappointed expectations from the Polish quarter, which he took as a good sign. “When only the Germans were against me, I did not know whether I was on the right track,” he later recalled, “but when also the Poles expressed their feelings against me, I was certain that I was doing the right thing.”44
Nuncio Ratti also found himself caught in the middle of a sharp partisan divide among the Catholic churchmen of the plebiscite region with no power to enforce a disinterested via media. The predominantly Polish lesser clergy of Upper Silesia comprised the most articulate, nationally conscious, and influential segment of the Poles of the province. With more or less open encouragement from Warsaw, many of these priests threw themselves into the political arena on behalf of Polish interests, while other itinerant clergy filtered in from Poland proper to lend support to the cause.45 This agitation annoyed the German archbishop, Cardinal Bertram, on two counts: not only did he oppose the pretensions of Poland to Silesia, as he often reminded Ratti, but he also resented the widespread electioneering of his own Polish priests as well as the unregulated comings and goings of the carpetbaggers in collars as a challenge to his right to maintain ecclesiastical order within his diocese. In the summer and fall of 1920, as German complaints mounted that the Poles were exploiting Silesian pulpits as nationalist soapboxes, Bertram gradually resolved to put a stop to it. Ratti was helpless to ward off the looming collision. Despite his symbolic stature as commissioner, he possessed no mandate to curb the freelance Polish clerics, and even less to override the legitimate pastoral and disciplinary authority of an angered ordinary much his senior. His only option was to apply moral suasion, but this was hampered by his frequent absence from the scene. After all, his residence and primary responsibilities remained in Warsaw, not Silesia, and the considerable distraction of the Polish-Soviet war also preoccupied his time and attention as the pressure mounted in the plebiscite zone.46
Cardinal Bertram dropped the other shoe on November 21, 1920, by issuing a decree pronouncing a ban on various types of politicking by clergy within Upper Silesia. Although it applied equally to both nationalities, Poles and Germans alike instantly grasped that the practical effect of the order, and doubtless its intent, was to damage the Polish chances to prevail in the vote. No ecclesiastics from other jurisdictions would be allowed to enter Upper Silesia for the purpose of influencing the outcome of the plebiscite. As for the mainly Polish priests of the archdiocese, they could comment or take part in political controversies only with permission of their parish pastors, seventy percent of whom happened to be German. To enraged Poles, the Church had cast its ballot for Germany by hamstringing the patriotic Polish clergy, thus arbitrarily nullifying their strongest asset in an uphill struggle to overcome the inherent advantages of the wealthier and better placed Germans in Silesia.
At the time and for years afterward, many wondered whether Ratti and the Vatican knew and approved of the Bertram decree in advance. The answer is both yes and no. The announcement apparently came as a complete and unwelcome surprise to Nuncio-Commissioner Ratti, who politely but firmly remonstrated with the cardinal for having handed down his edict without consultation or warning, as did Gasparri.47 On the other hand, Bertram had sent a number of signals to the Secretariat of State that he meant to assert his prerogatives as ordinary to pacify the turmoil in his churches, and Rome had voiced no objection, not realizing that he would act in such high-handed and one-sided fashion. Although Bertram had done the Curia no favor by exposing it to this unexpected embarrassment, the Vatican chose to put the best face on the matter, loath to undercut the archbishop of Breslau in the normal exercise of his valid authority. While privately conveying his reservations to the German prelate, Gasparri defended his right to enact the edict and allowed it to stand, doggedly insisting that Bertram had conducted himself as the “Priest-Pastor of all.”48
The Bertram decree stirred a hornet’s nest of protest in Poland, directed above all at the offending German archbishop, but also against Ratti and the Holy See as having been either complicit in the outrage or negligent in failing to prevent it. The incident swiftly reawakened all of the old Polish grievances against the Vatican, and even the pillars of Catholicism in the country gave way to expressions of shock and dismay. The press of all parties raised such a furor that the foreign minister made apologies to Benedict XV.49 However, the Warsaw government could barely contain its own wrath and sense of betrayal. Poland implored the pope to countermand Bertram, while official circles buzzed in private with rumors of spies, collusion, payoffs, and Germanophilia in Rome.50 The liveliest and most ominous reaction arose in the Sejm, where nationalists and anticlericals joined in denouncing the deed. The chamber echoed with calls to expel Ratti or break off relations with the Holy See before settling for demanding the separation of Upper Silesia from the Archdiocese of Breslau. The temper of the body was such that the highest ranking deputy-cleric, Archbishop Teodorowicz, stood not to defend the Vatican, but to pin the blame for the injustice squarely on Ratti, and to announce that the Polish episcopate had called on Pope Benedict to undo the offending order.51
From the midst of the storm, Ratti alerted Rome to the urgent need “to calm the Poles and restore their trust in the Holy See and the nuncio,” but already he had lost the ability to do any of those things.52 He no longer enjoyed the confidence of the Second Republic or of Polish public opinion, despite his celebrated valor at the Battle of Warsaw only three months earlier. Crowds staged hostile demonstrations outside his residence in the capital, where he went into virtual hiding. Among the prelates of the Polish Church the balance now swung in favor of the nationalist bishops, who, like Teodorowicz, never had much use for Ratti, his policies, or his alignment with Piłsudski. Rome stood by its beleaguered emissary, insisting that he had acted properly, but soon began a diplomatic retreat to extricate him from an impossible situation. Assuring Ratti that he had done no wrong, Gasparri relieved him of his Silesian assignment and quickly sent a substitute, Fr. Giovanni Ogno Serra, to take his place.53 These reverses stunned and wounded the nuncio, who felt illused and misunderstood. The pope tried to console him with words that revealed his own exasperation with Ratti’s newly inhospitable hosts: the Poles, he wrote, were “fickle” and “suspicious to excess,” guilty of ingratitude to the Holy See, “which has done so much for them.” Approached at the time by a Polish spokesman about Silesia, Benedict fixed him with a wintry smile and sighed, “Yes, I know, you want the coal.”54
Scrambling to salvage something from the wreckage, Cardinal Gasparri and the Polish minister to the Vatican, Wierusz-Kowalski, tried to repair the damage, but their efforts managed only to compound the predicament. The cardinal secretary of state agreed that Bertram had stepped out of line and that his decree should be tactfully annulled, and suggested a compromise: all Silesian clergy were to refrain from participating in the plebiscite campaign, and churches were to be off limits to political activity of any sort. Out of his depth, Wierusz-Kowalski somehow convinced himself
