LEDÓCHOWSKA, MIECZYSŁAW HALK, Count of. — Cardinal, b. 29 Oct. 1822 at Górki (diocese of Sandomir), d. 22 July 1902 at Rome. He studied at Radom and at the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics in Rome and was ordained priest in 1845. In 1851 he served as auditor at the nunciature in Lisbon, in 1855 as apostolic delegate in Colombia and Chile, in 1861 as nuncio in Brussels and titular archbishop of Thebes, and in December 1865 he was elected archbishop of Gnesna and Posen and preconized the following January.
In December 1870 he personally went to Versailles, to the headquarters of William I of Prussia, to deliver an address from the bishops of his ecclesiastical province seeking the monarch’s intervention on behalf of the Holy See against the Italian occupation of Rome. In 1872 a serious conflict arose between the archbishop and the Prussian government over a legislative measure forbidding religious instruction in Polish. In vain did L. oppose this injustice: teachers who refused to comply with the state authorities were deprived of their teaching posts. The conflict intensified after the enactment of the so-called May Laws. When the Prefect of Posen demanded that he resign the administration of the diocese “for his systematic resistance” to the new legislation, L. indignantly refused. Arrested on 3 Feb. 1874, he was imprisoned in the gaol of Ostrowo, where he received the papal brief announcing his elevation to the cardinalate at the Consistory of 15 March 1875. Released from prison, he came to Rome in March 1876. At the close of the Kulturkampf in 1886, he resigned the archbishopric. In 1892 Leo XIII appointed him Prefect of the S.C. of Propaganda Fide.