Bonaventura Cerretti and the Impossible Missions

Bonaventura Cerretti, after being auditor in the apostolic delegation to the United States from 1906 to 1914 and first apostolic delegate in Australia and New Zealand in 1914, represented the Holy See at the Paris Peace Conference in Paris from May to June 1919 in order to try involving the Great Powers to accept the principles of the Peace Note of Pope Benedict XV. Finally, he was appointed to serve as nuncio in France in 1921 before having been created Cardinal by Pope Pius XI in the consistory of 14 December 1925. This paper is focused on the patient diplomatic action of Msgr. Cerretti who, during his career, found himself in the middle of several thorny problems: some of them inherited from the past and from the traditional national State (the uneasy relationship between Church and State in Italy and in France); others arisen from the Great War in the new Globalizing World: the American Translatio imperii above the European powers in decline or even the ethnicization of the political conflict (planning of retaliatory actions based on ethnic or national origin) which - during the Peace Conference - emerges in the case of expulsion policies against the German Catholic missions from Asia and from Africa.