Holy
Father has written me the 'tallest' kind of a letter, endorsing every
good work in which I am engaged. Hurrah for Catholicity at
Fifty-ninth Street! My private opinion is that the Holy Father has
gone too far in his endorsement of Hecker. He has made me feel
ashamed of myself and humiliated."

When Pius IX. called together the Council of the Vatican Father
Hecker was urged by friends, among them several bishops, to go to
Rome for the occasion. The late Bishop Rosecrans, of Columbus, Ohio,
not being able to attend himself, appointed Father Hecker his
Procurator, or proxy. Before his departure he preached a sermon on
the Council in the Paulist Church, which was printed in _The Catholic
World_ for December, 1869. He devoted the greater part of it to
quieting the wild forebodings of timid Catholics and combating the
prognostics of outright anti-Catholics. He concluded by asking the
people to pray that the hopes of a new and brighter era for religion,
to date from this great event, might be fulfilled; for it was
commonly believed and expressly intended that the entire state of the
Church should be considered and legislated upon at the Council. The
breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war, as is well known, together
with the seizure of Rome by the Piedmontese, frustrated these hopes
as to all but the very first part of the work laid out for the
Council.

Father Hecker arrived in Rome on the 26th of November, 1869. When the
preliminary business of organization had been finished it was
announced that the procurators of absent bishops would not be
admitted to the Council, as the number of prelates present in person
was exceedingly large. But, he writes home:

"The Archbishop of Baltimore has made me his theologian of his own
accord. This gives me the privilege of reading all the documents of
the Council, of knowing all that takes place in it, its discussions,
etc. As his theologian I take part in the meetings and deliberations
of the American hierarchy, which is, as it were, a permanent council
concerning the interests of the Church in the United States, in which
I feel a strong and special interest."

Father Hecker had ever been a firm believer in the doctrine of papal
infallibility, as was the case with all American Catholics, prelates,
priests, and people. Shortly before leaving for the Council we heard
him say: "I have always heard the voice of Rome as that of truth
itself." This he also showed very plainly in his