Relazioni tra Santa Sede e Repubbliche baltiche (1918-1940): Monsignor Zecchini diplomatico (review)

Valerio Perna's well-crafted monograph examines the relations between the Holy See and the three Baltic republics during their two decades of independence between the world wars. Having emerged out of the wreckage of the defeated German and Russian empires in 1918 and generally lumped together in the eyes of the world, in fact this trio of tiny states along the Baltic littoral differed widely, not least in their diminishing degree of Catholicity from south to north: from solidly Catholic Lithuania through Latvia, where Catholics amounted to a significant minority; and up to Estonia, where they numbered a scant few thousands of souls.

The author is a historian at the University of Udine. His book confirms that it was the fate of the Baltic countries to be treated as little more than ciphers or matters of secondary interest in the diplomacy of the era, and this was true of the foreign policy of the Holy See, in its own distinctive fashion. Not without reason, the Vatican gave priority to Poland—returned to the map of Europe after more than a century of absence—as the natural focus of its attention in east central Europe and had to fit the Baltic republics into its calculations only on the margins. This complicated the Holy See's dealings with Lithuania, which lost out to Poland in a dispute over custody of the city of Wilno (Vilnius), and nursed a grudge against its larger Catholic neighbor throughout the interwar period.

The central figure in this account, as indicated in the subtitle, is Antonino Zecchini, a Jesuit of Friulian origin, who served as the Vatican's principal representative to the Baltic countries as archbishop and nuncio to Latvia. He served in this capacity for more than a decade until his death in Riga in 1935. In that country and Estonia, the Holy See's main concern was to protect the best interests of the Catholic minority, managing to do this with a minimum of friction. Perhaps paradoxically, the most Catholic of the Baltic states was the one that gave the papal diplomats the most headaches. A series of conflicts with the government of Lithuania led the nuncio to resign in 1931, and no successor was named until February 1940. Only four months later, the Soviet Union occupied all three Baltic countries, collecting part of its booty from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of the year before, and began the half-century of totalitarian rule over Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania that ended only with the collapse of the USSR and the accompanying return of independence.

The author has based his study primarily on the resources found in six state archives, notably the recently opened documents of the pontificate of Pius XI in the Vatican Archives and the papers of Luigi Faidutti, a priest-politician charged by the Vatican with the arduous task of trying to put its relations with Lithuania on even keel. The book lacks a bibliography, but is enhanced by photographs and a timeline. The very tight focus of Perna's monograph likely will limit its readership to specialists, but they will find it useful, informative, and reliable.