Francisco de Asís Vidal y Barraquer (Catalan: Francesc d'Assís Vidal i Barraquer, 3 October 1868 – 13 September 1943) was a Spanish Catalancardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Tarragona from 1919 until his death; he was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 1921.
He famously refused to sign the 1937 Collective Letter in which the Spanish Church's hierarchy gave their support to Francisco Franco's forces,[1] and died in exile in Switzerland.
Biography
Born in Cambrils to a family of rural landowners and liberal professionals, Francisco Vidal y Barraquer attended the Colegio San Ignacio in Manresa (1880–1885), earned his bachillerato at the seminary in Barcelona (1885), and then practiced law for a year after studying at the lawfaculty of Barcelona. He entered the seminary of Tarragona in 1895, and was ordained to the priesthood on 17 September 1899. On 24 September 1900 Vidal obtained his doctorate in law from the University of Madrid. He sought to join the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuits, but his father asked Francisco to finish a career first.
During the Spanish Civil War, Vidal remained in a position of neutrality. When the Revolution of 1936 broke out, the cardinal found his life in danger at the hands of leftist militias and fled to Poblet, Barcelona. Taken captive by Federacion Anarquista Iberica militiamen and on the point of being killed, his life was saved by the Catalan Culture Commissioner Ventura Gassol, a former seminarian and friend who saved the lives of several priests in Catalonia.[2] Vidal eventually left the country and made it to the Carthusian monastery of Farneta in Lucca, Italy. Franco's troops occupied Tarragona on 15 January 1939 and Barcelona on 26 January. José de Yanguas, 11th Viscount of Santa Clara de Avedillo then urgently requested an audience with Cardinal Pacelli to express the Francoist demand that Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer be removed from his see at Tarragona. The Francoist Minister the Conde de Jordana summoned the nuncio and passed to him a memorandum that declared the government wished, since part of the clergy "has been contaminated by separatist doctrines", for Enrique Pla y Deniel to be appointed to the See of Tarragona. A liturgical rite for the reconciliation of Tarragona Cathedral—although it had not been burnt or destroyed, it was considered profane because of several acts of vandalism during the first days of the revolution—was carried out in a ritual officiated over by don José Artero, the canon of Salamanca Cathedral, in which he gave a "violent speech [that included a denunciation of] Catalan dogs! You don't deserve the sun that shines on you!"[3]
After the death of Pius XI, Vidal i Barraquer participated in the conclave of 1939, which resulted in the election of Pope Pius XII. However, the cardinal's Catalanism, good relations with the Republican authorities of Catalonia, and his refusal to sign the joint letter of the Spanish episcopate during the civil war caused Generalissimo Franco to forbid him from returning to his archdiocese in the cardinal's lifetime; he nevertheless refused to renounce his post. Pius XII was outraged to hear that Franco desired to send Vidal, as a man hostile to the Francoist State, into exile.[4]
Franco lifted his ban on Vidal in 1941, after he and the Vatican reached a concordat.[5] However, the cardinal remained in Italy, and in 1943, the Germanoccupation of Italy forced him to move to Switzerland.
Cardinal Vidal died in Fribourg, at the age of 74. He was initially buried at a Carthusian monastery in Valsainte, but his remains were transferred, in accord with his will, to Tarragona in May 1978. Vidal is buried beside his former auxiliary, Bishop Manuel Borràs, who was imprisoned and then tortured and executed by Popular Front militiamen during the civil war while Vidal was in exile.[6]