Concordat of 1925 - Concordat and Lithuania

Concordat and Lithuania

The concordat caused a severe conflict between Holy See and Lithuania. The concordat established an ecclesiastical province in Wilno, thereby acknowledging Poland's claims to the city despite Lithuanian requests to govern the province directly from Rome. Lithuania and Poland had been in a bitter struggle for the city and the surrounding area since 1920 when the city was taken over by pro-Polish forces during Żeligowski's Mutiny. Lithuanians submitted a protest to the Holy See and recalled its representative there; the Holy See responded in kind and all diplomatic relations between Lithuania and the Holy See were terminated. They did not improve when in April 1926 Pope Pius XI unilaterally established and reorganized the Lithuanian ecclesiastical province without regard to Lithuanian demands and proposals. Popular outrage in response to the concordat was one of the reasons why the Lithuanian Christian Democrats, the leading pro-Catholic party in Lithuania, lost the majority in the 1926 parliamentary elections. As a result, a weak coalition government was formed; this in turn inspired a military coup d'état in December 1926. Lithuanian relations with the Holy See were normalized a few months later, on June 4, 1927, when a concordat was signed between Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri for the Holy See and Dr. Jurgis Šaulys for Lithuania. The improvements in 1927 were mostly due to the efforts of Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras.