Note 215 — THE APOSTOLIC MISSION TO CHILI. A CHAPTER IN THE LIFE OF PIUS IX.

It is curious to contrast the tedious trials that Rome endured before being able to appoint bishops to independent Spanish America, with her ease in establishing the hierarchy in the United States. Yet the Spaniards and Loyalists, who sometimes forgot that political differences should never interfere with religious unity, might have found a precedent for this aversion in the case of their northern brethren. In a sketch of the church in the United States, written by Bishop Carroll in 1790, it is said that “during the whole war there was not the least communication between the Catholics of America and their bishop, who was the vicar-apostolic of the London district. To his spiritual jurisdiction were subject the United States; but whether he would hold no correspondence with a country which he, perhaps, considered in a state of rebellion, or whether a natural indolence and irresolution restrained him, the fact is he held no kind of intercourse with priest or layman in this part of his charge.”—B. U. Campbell “Memoirs, etc. of the Most Rev. John Carroll,” in the U. S. Catholic Magazine, 1845.