Ledóchowski, Mieczysław Halka, Count of

LEDÓCHOWSKI, MIECZYSLAW HALKA, count of. — Cardinal, born on 29 October 1822 at Górki (diocese of Sandomir), died on 22 July 1902 in Rome. He studied at Radom and at the Academy of Ecclesiastical Nobles in Rome and was ordained a priest in 1845. Auditor at the nunciature in Lisbon in 1851, apostolic delegate in Colombia and Chile in 1855, nuncio in Brussels and titular archbishop of Thebes in 1861, he was elected archbishop of Gnesna and Posnania in December 1865 and preconized the following January.

In December 1870 he personally went to Versailles, to the headquarters of William I of Prussia, to deliver to him an address from the bishops of his ecclesiastical province, seeking to obtain the sovereign’s intervention in favor of the Holy See against the Italian occupation of Rome. In 1872 a serious conflict arose between the archbishop and the Prussian government, caused by a legislative provision prohibiting the imparting of religious instruction in the Polish language. L. opposed this abuse in vain: teachers who refused to submit to the will of the state authorities were deprived of their teaching positions. The conflict intensified after the promulgation of the so-called May Laws. Requested by the prefect of Posen to resign from the administration of the diocese “because of his systematic resistance” to the new legislative provisions, L. responded with an indignant refusal. Arrested on 3 February 1874, he was imprisoned in the jails of Ostrowo, where he received the papal brief informing him of the conferment of the cardinalitial dignity at the Consistory of 15 March 1875. Released from prison, he came to Rome in March 1876. At the end of the Kulturkampf, in 1886, he resigned the archbishopric. In 1892 Leo XIII appointed him prefect of Propaganda Fide.