Accordingly, in late December Fr. Ogno Serra, Ratti’s freshly installed replacement in Silesia, issued the new formula. Of course, from the Polish standpoint, this simply made a bad situation worse. As evidently every Pole besides Wierusz-Kowalski readily grasped, they needed fewer restrictions on priestly political agitation, not more, so the hasty revision merely deepened their dissatisfaction with the Vatican.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Wincenty Witos asked the Polish Church to intercede with the pope, and in early December the bishops dispatched their colleagues Sapieha and Teodorowicz as a delegation to the Vatican to vent the displeasure of the episcopate and, apparently, to seek the recall of Nuncio Ratti. Sapieha was a logical choice, well connected in Rome and seasoned in its ways dating from his youthful service as chamberlain to Pius X. However, sending Teodorowicz on a delicate diplomatic errand was like sending gasoline to put out a fire. His blood up, the Armenian-rite pastor barged through the Vatican like a maddened bull, leaving a trail of disarray and hard feelings that hurt the standing of Poland with the Curia more than helped it.56 Granted an audience with Benedict shortly after the new year, the Polish bishops explained their country’s objection to the Ogno-Serra declaration, much to the surprise of the pontiff, who informed his equally startled visitors that Minister Wierusz-Kowalski had happily assented to that very plan. After the confusion was sorted out, the pope relented to the extent of permitting Silesian clergy to take part in public political meetings not on church grounds. Sapieha and Teodorowicz returned to Poland believing they had attained at least some of the goals of their mission, but unsettled by the prevalent mood of sympathy for Germany and skepticism toward Poland they had encountered in Rome. Their qualms deepened a few days later when Cardinal Gasparri, after consulting with Ratti’s replacement in Silesia, instructed them that the new policy would go into effect only insofar as it was consistent with the original Ogno-Serra design, which was to say not at all.57 The Sapieha-Teodorowicz embassy had come to nothing, the latest casualty of a series of snafus within the Curia or, as the latter feared, of a deliberate attempt to help Germany win the Silesian plebiscite.
Both bishops shot off letters of protest to Benedict XV, and Teodorowicz’s epistle trespassed outside the bounds of expected courtesy. Furious, he flatly accused Gasparri of dealing in deception and bad faith on the Silesian question, citing as evidence fragments of internal Polish foreign ministry correspondence shown him by Wierusz-Kowalski while in Rome. These charges scarcely endeared Teodorowicz or his case for Silesia to the Vatican, and especially the cardinal secretary of state. After pointed delay, Gasparri delivered a cold response to Sapieha, tersely defending the conduct and good intentions of the Holy See and adding that he would not deign to reply to the Armenian archbishop who had impugned his integrity.58
As it happened, fortune or judicious leak provided Gasparri with a measure of revenge that embarrassed Teodorowicz and ended the Roman tenure of Wierusz-Kowalski. Within weeks, the news got out that the Polish envoy to the Vatican had divulged confidential state documents to a private citizen, the archbishop, who in turn had passed on the contents to a foreign power, according to one way of looking at it. These revelations touched off yet another uproar in the Sejm, where both men came under fire for their indiscretions. As a consequence, the hapless Wierusz-Kowalski got the sack and a ticket to a less demanding post, while deputy Teodorowicz had to endure a very public hazing from the benches of the anticlerical Left, a sport encouraged by the Piłsudski camp, which saw a chance to score points at the expense of their adversary. In retort, the excitable Fr. Adamski asked how anyone could expect the Vatican to want to see Upper Silesia “toss[ed] . . . into the jaws of the Jewish-socialist Polish government.” This farcical affair was, as one of Ratti’s staff noted, a tempest in a teapot, for neither Wierusz-Kowalski nor Teodorowicz had meant or done real harm to Polish interests; still, he admitted, he did not grieve unduly to see the turbulent archbishop get a taste of comeuppance, deserved in this instance or not.59
When Poland lost the Upper Silesian plebiscite in March 1921, as prelude to a distasteful eventual partition of the province, Ratti made a handy scapegoat for the disappointment, and public opinion and officialdom alike called for his head. Convinced that his scholar-turned-diplomat had performed well in a difficult and sensitive assignment, Pope Benedict at first resisted the demands for his ouster, warning the Poles that if they forced him to bring the embattled nuncio home, he would refuse to appoint a successor. However, the death of the archbishop of Milan, the see of Ratti’s native region, afforded the pontiff the chance to solve his problem and reward his protégé simultaneously. In short order, Ratti received both Milan and a cardinalate, and by June he had exchanged the rigors of Poland for the relative serenity of Lombardy.60
Not content with merely sending Ratti packing back to Italy, Poland pelted him with indignities on his way out to make sure nobody missed the message. Plans to award him an honorary degree from the University of Warsaw were scrapped, and the government took the even more drastic step of refusing to present him with the medal of the Order of the White Eagle, normally given to departing diplomats, despite the warnings of Wierusz-Kowalski that the snub would give great offense to the Vatican. By the time Cardinal Gasparri lodged a complaint with the Polish legation about the ferocity of the vindictive campaign against Ratti, Wierusz-Kowalski was gone, and his replacement gave no ground, coolly answering that the attacks were but an accurate gauge of “the disquiet of the majority of Polish society.”61
The Silesian fiasco took a heavy toll in acrimony and ill will and subjected the relationship between Poland and the papacy to severe, if temporary, strain. On the governmental level, the bruises healed within a few months, with both sides chalking it up to normal diplomatic rough-and-tumble: although they clearly did not see eye to eye on Silesia, other common interests bound them together, and neither could afford to let the partnership dissolve. The Vatican held much keener resentment toward the Polish Church for its behavior in the quarrel. For his part, Achille Ratti never forgot his unhappy last months in Poland and nursed a grudge against his tormentors among the Polish bishops, especially Sapieha and Teodorowicz, until his dying day. In July 1921, in one of his last communications with the Church of Poland, Benedict XV sent the bishops an acerbic, scolding letter that upbraided them for allowing their patriotic sentiments concerning Upper Silesia to lead to words and actions “ill intentioned or . . . disrespectful of the Holy See.” Reminding them of his need to remain impartial, he advised them to show charity toward Catholics of other nationalities and bluntly told them to stay out of politics. Merely bringing up the subject of Poland could make Cardinal Gasparri see red in those days. “Can this be a Catholic episcopate,” he would exclaim, “can this be a Catholic press!”62
A decade later, Cardinal Kakowski wrote that in spite of the bitter unpleasantness of the Silesian affair, the passage of time had shown it to be an act of Providence, for without it the Church would not have gained its “Polish Pope.”63 In January 1922 Benedict XV died in the ninth year of his reign, and the combination of suitable age and prestigious see made plain that the select number of papabili included none other than the freshly minted Cardinal Ratti, not a favorite but a well-positioned dark horse. The prospect of a Ratti papacy unnerved many of the clergy of Poland, but gladdened one of the electors, Kakowski, who had been the main backer of the former nuncio among the Polish episcopate. Much to his agreeable surprise, before his departure for the conclave the new Polish government of Antoni Ponikowski, letting bygones be bygones, informed him that Ratti was its preferred candidate, and upon arriving in Rome he learned that the archbishop of Milan also stood high on the list of France, the principal ally of Warsaw. As the cardinals assembled in the Eternal City and parleyed while awaiting the vote, Kakowski set about lobbying them regarding the sterling qualities of his choice. Countering descriptions of Ratti in the Italian press as a liberal, a term they would have taken as a black mark against him, the Pole assured his colleagues, “Si, he has a liberal heart, but a Catholic head and a holy life.”64
The rise of Ratti’s star prompted Poland to offer some quick amends. Sensing that he stood a decent chance of election as the next pope, the Polish legation to the Vatican recalled one slight he had suffered and put in a rush order for belated conferral of the White Eagle decoration denied him
