John Joseph Frederick Otto Zardetti

John Joseph Frederick Otto Zardetti (January 24, 1847 – May 10, 1902) was a Swiss prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the first bishop of the new Diocese of Saint Cloud in Minnesota in the United States from 1889 to 1894. Zardetti then served as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Bucharest in what is today Romania from 1894 to 1895. After resigning as archbishop, Zardetti briefly, but influentially served in the Roman Curia with the title of titular archbishop of Mocissus.

According to his biographer Reverend Vincent A. Yzermans, Zardetti played a major role in successfully pushing for Pope Leo XIII's 1899 Apostolic letter Testem Benevolentiae, which condemned the heresy of Americanism. In commenting on Zardetti's role in the letter, Yzermans has commented, "In this arena he might well have had seen his greatest impact on American Catholicism in the first half of the twentieth century in the United States."

Biography

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. 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. Otto's father Eugen Zardetti then married Annette von Bayer, a member of an aristocratic family.

Due to 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.

In 1874, Zardetti was named library director for the Abbey of Saint Gall in St. Gallen. He was appointed canon (Domkustos) in 1876 for the Diocese of St. Gallen.

Bishop of Saint Cloud

Pope Leo XIII appointed Zardetti on October 3, 1889, as the first bishop of the new Diocese of St. Cloud. Traveling in Europe at that time, he was consecrated in Einsiedlen, Switzerland, on October 20, 1889, by Archbishop William Gross. One subsequent historian dubbed Zardetti as, "Ireland's most aggravating suffragan."

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, Zardetti's reasons for opposing the English-only movement were expressed in his sermon of September 21, 1891 inside St. Joseph's Cathedral during the Fifth German-American Congress in Buffalo, New York. Zardetti's speech was entitled "America and her Citizens by Adoption", but has since been dubbed, "The Sermon on the Mother and the Bride". In his speech, Zardetti denounced Nativism, which he compared to building a Great Wall of China around the U.S. border and denying entrance to anyone not wearing a queue. He called such policies a national ruin 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 government 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." 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." James Conway, an Ireland supporter, attacked Zardetti's speech in the September 28, 1891, issue of the Northwestern Chronicle, accusing him of advocating neglect for the Catholic Church. 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." Zardetti replied to Conway on October 30, saying he misquoted the sermon, saying 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."

Morality issues Between 1893 and 1894, Zardetti worked closely with St. Cloud Times editor Colin Francis MacDonald and the city's Protestant clergy to oppose what they viewed as the tolerant policies of Republican Mayor Daniel Webster Bruckhart towards organized prostitution and illegal gambling in St. Cloud. The newspaper made multiple allegations of crime figures paying protection money to senior figures in both the city government and the police department. Zardetti and the Protestant clergy denounced prostitution, illegal gambling and corrupt politicians in sermons on Easter Sunday 1894. On the next election day, April 1, 1894, only one city official was successfully re-elected in what Yzermans described as a, "massacre."

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.