Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. Excerpt: ... Ill CARDINAL GIBBONS AND AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS." HE following is the address of Cardinal Gibbons as published in the daily papers, on his taking possession of his titular church in Rome, March 25: "The assignment to me by the Holy Father of this beautiful basilica as my titular church fills me with feelings of joy and gratitude which any words of mine are wholly inadequate to express. For as here in Rome I stand within the first temple raised in honor of the ever-blessed Virgin Mary, so in my far-off home my own cathedral church, the oldest in the United States, is also dedicated to the Mother of God. "That never-ceasing solicitude which the Sovereign Pontiffs have exhibited in erecting those material temples which are the glory of this city, they have also manifested on a larger scale in rearing spiritual walls to Sion throughout Christendom in every age. Scarcely were the United States of America formed into an independent government when Pope Pius VII. established therein a Catholic hierarchy and appointed the illustrious John Carroll the first bishop of Baltimore. Our Catholic community in those days numbered only a few thousand souls, and they were scattered chiefly through the States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. They were served by the merest handful of priests. But now, thanks to ihe fructifying grace of God, the grain of mustard-seed then planted has grown a large tree, spreading its branches through the length and breadth of our fair land. Where only one bishop was found in the beginning of this century there are now seventy-five exercising spiritual jurisdiction. For this great progress we are indebted, under God and the fostering care of the Holy See, to the civil liberty we enjoy in our enlightened republic. "Our...
