[3][failed verification] His paternal ancestors, members of the minor Italian nobility, had moved to Switzerland from Bagno, in the Kingdom of Piedmont, at the end of the 18th century,[4] where his father married into the aristocratic von Bayer family.

[5][1] Because of his talent for languages, Zardetti was invited by Bishop Karl Johann Greith to attend the First Vatican Council in Rome from November 1869 to spring 1870.

Returning to Switzerland, he soon received an offer from Archbishop Michael Heiss of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to teach dogmatics at the Metropolitan Seminary of Wisconsin.

Cloud, Zardetti clashed repeatedly and publicly with his immediate superior, Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul and his supporters in the American Hierarchy.

"[9] Although they are rooted in Pope Gregory XI's 1373 "règle d'idiom", a commandment for the Catholic clergy to communicate with their flocks in the local vernacular, instead of allowing the Church to become a tool of coercive language death,[10] Bishop Zardetti's reasons for opposing the English-only movement were best expressed in his sermon of 21 September 1891 inside St. Joseph's Cathedral during the Fifth German-American Congress in Buffalo, New York.

Zardetti's speech was entitled (German: Die Pflichten und Rechte des Adoptivbürgers in Amerika) "America and her Citizens by Adoption", but has since been dubbed, "The Sermon on the Mother and the Bride".

Zardetti denounced Nativism, which he compared to building a Great Wall of China around the border and denying entrance to anyone not wearing a Queue.

He called such policies a national ruin whenever they were applied and argued that, as German-Americans, "We all have left our mother and chosen America as our bride."

He denounced the concept of linguistic imperialism imposed by the State as "tyranny", as leaving language shifts to natural processes rooted in individual choices was far preferable.

Bishop Zardetti's appreciation of Scripture is too great not to have noticed how the spirit of the following text was violated: 'Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife.'

He accused Conway of misquoting his sermon, "and stated that he did not speak of German immigrants alone, but of all not born on American soil, which included himself and the editor of the Chronicle.

Bishop Zardetti believed that any dependence on Government aid whatsoever would eventually be used as a means of destroying the independence of both Catholic education and the Church itself from control by the State.

Cloud Times editor Colin Francis MacDonald and the city's Protestant clergy to oppose the tolerant policies of Republican Mayor Daniel Webster Bruckhart towards organized prostitution and illegal gambling in St.

In a campaign marked by multiple press allegations of protection money being paid to senior figures in both the city government and the police department, Bishop Zardetti and the Protestant clergy denounced prostitution and illegal gambling and politicians who tolerated both vices from their pulpits on Easter Sunday 1894.

"[16][17][18] Suffering from chronic health problems that were aggravated by the harsh Minnesota climate and much traveling, Zardetti requested that the Vatican transfer him back in Europe.

Zardetti played a major role, in his capacity as a member of the Roman Curia, in Pope Leo XIII's Apostolic letter Testem Benevolentiae, which condemned Americanism as a heresy.

Following a Requiem Mass offered by Bishop Augustine Egger of St. Gall, Archbishop Zardetti was buried beside the famous theologian Cardinal Joseph Hergenröther in the crypt of the Cistercian Territorial Abbey of Wettingen-Mehrerau, near Bregenz, Vorarlberg, Austria, where his body remains to this day.