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THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA 5 REMINISCENCES ON CARDINAL GIBBONS BY THE BISHOP OF SAVANNAH. The Bulletin has asked me to say a word about the late Cardinal Gibbons, whom I knew intimately for more than fifty years. I met him first at the time of his consecration in the Baltimore Cathedral on Au gust 16, 1868. He and Bishop Becker were both consecrated at that time by Archbishop Spalding. Bishop Gibbons had been selected by Pius IX for the newly created Vicariate Apostolic of North Carolina, and after his consecration went to Wilmington, N. C., where he made his home. In October, 1869, Bishop Gibbons, in company with Archbishop Spalding and Bishops McGill, Wood, Domenec, Fitzgerald and O Gorman went to Rome to attend the Vatican Coun cil, and as I was on the same ship going to Rome for my ecclesiastical studies at the American College, I had many opportunities then and in Rome of seeing him. He did not speak at the Council. He was one of the youngest bishops then, and his death removes the sole survivor of that Council. My recollections, based on many talks with him there, is that he was a mild inopportunist. He came back home in the summer of 1870, after the meetings of the Council had been prorogued by Pius IX on account of the heat. As is well known, the Piedmontese invasion of the Eternal City caused the suspension of the Council, which has never since been reconvened. Bishop Gibbons, with characteristic energy, went back to his Vicariate to take up again his missionary labors until the death of Bishop McGill, of Richmond, left a vacancy in that See, which was filled by the transfer of Bishop Gibbons to Richmond in 1872. As Richmond was my home, I saw a great deal of him during my annual visits to my mother. It was during his stay in Richmond that he gathered to gether some of his sermons delivered in North Caro lina and published them under the title, “The Faith of Our Fathers.” The phenomenal success of this little work was as much a surprise to him as to every one, and the fact, so often repeated to him, of its equally great success as a convert maker, was a great source of happiness to him. In 1877 he went to Baltimore as Coadjutor to the Archbishop of Baltimore, James Roosevelt Bayley, and at his death became Archbishop of Baltimore. He was a loyal Baltimorean and loved the city and its institutions. He included in this love and loyalty the Cathedral. I well remember when the extension of the sanctuary was under way his look of almost horror when I mildly suggested that it would be a good thing to tear down the ugly throne and replace it with a better one. He seemed amazed at the re mark and replied, “I consider the throne very beau tiful, and I do not think it could be improved.” He convened and presided over the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore and a short time after its closing was created a Cardinal Priest of the Church, with the title of St. Mary’s Across the Tiber. He was not an orator in the usually accepted sig nificance of that word, but a forcible, clear and at times eloquent speaker. He made no pretense to be a great speaker, and I well remember as I was one day walking out Cathedral Street with him he said to me, “I sometimes wish I were such a speaker as Newman or Manning, because my monthly sermons in the Cathedral are published by the Associated Press, and I could do so much for God and the Church.” He was a great lover and ardent reader of Holy Scripture, and his sermons were illustrated with copious and very felicitous extracts from God’s Word. Despite his high position, he was gentle, affable and always most approachable. Cardinal Gibbons took little interest in politics as such, but his love and devotion to the Republic and its Constitution were intense. He considered the Federal Constitution as the wisest and best human document ever issued, and was always and every where ready by voice and pen to support and defend it. Naturally, as a Catholic Bishop, he was a staunch supporter of civil authority. The United States never had a more loyal citizen nor a more vigorous de fender than Cardinal Gibbons. While he was Bishop of Richmond, a visitor from New Jersey who had never been in Richmond, was at his house and the Bishop wanted to show him the city. I happened to be visiting my mother at the time, and so the Bishop and his guest drove by for me as Richmond was my home and I was to be their guide. On stopping to get a view of a factory which had been used for a prison during the War Between the States, and known as Libby Prison, Bishop Gib bons remarked, “My heart was with the South dur ing the war, but my head with the North.” I merely replied, “No medical operation is necessary in my case to ascertain my position, as I was head and heart for the Lost Cause.” I do not believe that there was ever a Catholic Bishop who was so universally loved and respected as Cardinal Gibbons, and I recall the almost universal condemnation of a fanatical Prohibitionist preacher who attacked him some years since in a low, vulgar manner. So far as I know, the only other example was afforded by a notorious editor in Georgia from whom any praise would have been considered a gross insult. It is just fifty-three years since I saw him conse crated Bishop, and thirty-six years ago I was in the Cathedral when he received the’ Red Cap of a Car dinal. He changed the purple robe of a Bishop for the Red Robe of a Cardinal as eighteen years before he had changed the Black Robe of a Priest for the Episcopal Purple. But the change was only an ex terior one. He wa^ as simple and gentle as he had ever been. His heart in many things was the heart of a child.