Early life

Otto Zardetti was born on January 24, 1847, in Rorschach, Canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland, to Eugen and Annette Anna (née von Bayer) Zardetti, an upper-middle-class family who dealt in canvas and colonial goods.^[3] His paternal ancestors, members of the minor Italian nobility, had moved to Switzerland from Bagno, in the Kingdom of Piedmont, at the end of the 18th-century,^[4] where his father married into the aristocratic von Bayer family.^[5] His brother was the noted artist, photographer, and automobile pioneer Eugen Zardetti.

Zardetti attended the local primary and secondary school in Rorschach, then the Stella Matutina school in Feldkirch, Austria. He then returned to Switzerland, where he entered the Diocesan minor seminary in St. Georgen near the city of St. Gallen. Zardetti received his university education in theology and philosophy from the University of Innsbruck in Innsbruck, Austria.^[5][1]

Because of his talent for languages, Zardetti was invited by Bishop Karl Johann Greith to attend the First Vatican Council in Rome from November 1869 to Spring 1870. While in Rome, Zardetti met the future Bishop Martin Marty, another Swiss priest. Returning to Innsbruck, Zardetti received a Doctor of Theology degree from the University of Innsbruck in 1870.^[5]

Priesthood

Zardetti was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Benedetto Riccabona de Reinchenfels in 1870 in St. Gallen.^[5][3] His fluency in French, English and Italian as well as German brought him a post as professor in rhetoric in St. Georgen (1871-1874).

An 1874 visit to England resulted in Zardetti developing a close friendship with Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, which would remain a major influence for the rest of Zardetti's earthly life.^[6]

After that he became director of the Abbey Library of Saint Gall (1874-1876) and then canon (Domkustos) at the Diocese of St. Gallen (1876-1881).^[5][1]

In 1879, Zardetti embarked on a four month trip to America. Returning to Switzerland, he soon received an offer from Archbishop Michael Heiss of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to teach dogmatics at the Metropolitan Seminary of Wisconsin.^[5] Zardetti arrived in Wisconsin in late 1881.^[1] In 1887, Bishop Marty appointed Zardetti as general vicar for the Dakota Vicariate.^[7]

Bishop of Saint Cloud

Pope Leo XIII appointed Zardetti on October 3, 1889, to be the first bishop of the Diocese of St. Cloud. Traveling in Europe at that time, he was consecrated in Einsiedlen, Switzerland, on October 20, 1889, by Archbishop William Gross.^[3] Zardetti immediately started construction of a suitable building to serve as the diocesan cathedral. He worked to enlarge the parochial school system and created a newspaper for the diocese. Zardetti became known throughout the country for his oratorical skills.^[1]

During his term as Bishop of St. Cloud, Zardetti clashed repeatedly and publicly with his immediate superior, Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul and his supporters in the American Hierarchy. One reasons for these clashes was Zardetti's hostility to Archbishop Ireland's Modernist theology. Another reason was Ireland's belief in banning the use of all languages other than English from Catholic parishes and schools versus Zardetti's belief in linguistic rights and the importance of teaching, preaching, and nurturing the German language in the United States and other threatened heritage and minority languages like it.^[8] One subsequent historian has according dubbed Zardetti, "Ireland's most aggravating suffragen."^[9]

Although they are rooted in Pope Gregory XI's 1373 "règle d'idiom", a commandment for the Catholic clergy to communicate with their flocks in the local vernacular, instead of allowing the Church to become a tool of coercive language death,^[10] Bishop Zardetti's reasons for opposing the English-only movement were best expressed in his sermon of 21 September 1891 inside St. Joseph's Cathedral during the Fifth German-American Congress in Buffalo, New York. Zardetti's speech was entitled (German: Die Pflichten und Rechte des Adoptivbürgers in Amerika) "America and her Citizens by Adoption", but has since been dubbed, "The Sermon on the Mother and the Bride". Zardetti denounced Nativism, which he compared to building a Great Wall of China around the border and denying entrance to anyone not wearing a Queue. He called such policies a national ruin whenever they were applied and argued that, as German-Americans, "We all have left our mother and chosen America as our bride." He denounced the concept of linguistic imperialism imposed by the State as "tyranny", as leaving language shifts to natural processes rooted in individual choices was far preferable. Zardetti added, "Language is so intimately connected with man that even when favored by circumstances and prompted by zeal, he learns a new language, he must be permitted to express his needs and heart's desires in the mother tongue. Otherwise nature itself remonstrates and, as a consequence thereof, religious apostasy will follow. Antagonisms and racial differences cannot be wiped out by coercion. An attempt at suppressing them by force only adds bitterness and renders them more prominent. Warfare and friction originate from it."^[11]

In closing, Zardetti preached, "Love Germany; she is your mother. In sorrow has she brought you forth. Her lineage may be placed side by side with any that of any nation. You are the equal of any. As a united nation of brothers, love America. I need not say to the groom love your spouse. That love which prompted you to leave father and mother and to cross the ocean and which now holds you here with a thousand ties, needs no encouragement from me. Where could you find another bride so young, so rich, so charming as America? Above her head the stars circle. Her garment is embroidered by the busy hands of nations. In her bosom she bears the riches of a New World, gold in her minerals, gold in her granaries, gold in her handiwork."^[12]

Pro-Archbishop Ireland editor James Conway attacked Bishop Zardetti's speech in the 28 September 1891 issue of the Northwestern Chronicle, which accused the Bishop of advocating neglect for the Bride. Conway continued, "No wonder she should grow somewhat jealous, and complain of the cold treatment accorded her. Bishop Zardetti's appreciation of Scripture is too great not to have noticed how the spirit of the following text was violated: 'Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife.' No wonder the bride should utter complaint through the press that she was subordinated to the mother-in-law. The blushing beauty was neglected."^[13]

Bishop Zardetti replied on 30 October. He accused Conway of misquoting his sermon, "and stated that he did not speak of German immigrants alone, but of all not born on American soil, which included himself and the editor of the Chronicle."^[14]

Bishop Zardetti was equally firm in his defense of Catholic schools in the United States, against the concept, which he viewed as rooted in The Enlightenment, that children are the sole property of the State, which alone has the right to educate or form children's minds through compulsory attendance at public schools. At the same time that Archbishop Ireland was seeking to make Catholic schools as similar to public schools as possible through the Poughkeepsie plan and similar measures, Bishop Zardetti was vocal in his belief that the United States Government could not be trusted to tolerate the independence of Catholic schools, which he argued should never accept government funding or even free textbooks. Bishop Zardetti believed that any dependence on Government aid whatsoever would eventually be used as a means of destroying the independence of both Catholic education and the Church itself from control by the State.^[15]

Between 1893 and 1894, Zardetti worked closely with St. Cloud Times editor Colin Francis MacDonald and the city's Protestant clergy to oppose the tolerant policies of Republican Mayor Daniel Webster Bruckhart towards organized prostitution and illegal gambling in St. Cloud. In a campaign marked by multiple press allegations of protection money being paid to senior figures in both the city government and the police department, Bishop Zardetti and the Protestant clergy denounced prostitution and illegal gambling and politicians who tolerated both vices from their pulpits on Easter Sunday 1894. On the next election day, April 1, 1894, only one city official was successfully re-elected in what Zardetti's biographer, Rev. Yzermans, has described as a, "massacre."^[16][17][18]

Suffering from chronic health problems that were aggravated by the harsh Minnesota climate and much traveling, Zardetti requested that the Vatican transfer him back in Europe.^[5]

Archbishop of Bucharest and member of Curia

Leo XIII appointed Zardetti as archbishop of the Archdiocese Bucharest on March 6, 1894. However, his health again became a problem. In response, Leo XIII accepted Zardetti's resignation on May 25, 1895, as archbishop of Bucharest, appointed him titular archbishop of Mocissus and named him to the Roman Curia. He became a canon to the Church of Saint John Lateran in Rome and as a consultor to two districts.^[3][5]

According his biographers Fr. Vincent A. Yzermans and Franz Xaver Wetzel, Archbishop Zardetti's clashes over theology and other matters with Archbishop John Ireland and his supporters in the American hierarchy never completely ceased. Zardetti played a major role, in his capacity as a member of the Roman Curia, in Pope Leo XIII's Apostolic letter Testem Benevolentiae, which condemned Americanism as a heresy. The encyclical was signed by the Pope on 22 January, 1899. As a reward, Zardetti was promoted to assistant to the papal throne on 14 February 1899.^[1][19]

During this period, Zardetti expressed his desire to visit Saint Cloud, but his health problems prevented it.^[1]