“This had the effect desired by the bishop. We had collected all the money that could be collected then, in our small congregation; it was impossible for us to do any more, so we concluded to give up the battle. The bishop then, went on, took the money we had sold the house for ($1,200). A Catholic lady, whose husband had bought the house, had subscribed one hundred dollars for removing the church, providing the bishop would promise that it would remain in the hands of the French, and attended by a French priest. The bishop proffered again to that lady the lie, which he had so often uttered to us, everywhere, even from the altar, that upon his word of bishop, it should remain a French Church, and that they should have a French priest. (This we should call lie number one). He then moved the church to another lot of his own, sent an Irish priest to officiate in it, put the money in his pocket, and made the congregation which is now Irish, pay for the lot, the moving and repairing of the church, and he takes quarterly the revenues which are no less than $2,000 a year.
““This is the way we have been swindled out of our church, of the house of our priest, and of our all, by the tyrant, Bishop O’Regan: and when a French priest visits our city, he forbids him to address us in our mother tongue. This is the way we, French Catholics, as a society, have been blotted out of the book of the living!
“And when Rev. Father Chiniquy has publicly accused Bishop O’Regan of having deprived us most unjustly of our church, he has proffered a truth which has as many witnesses as there are Catholics and Protestants in Chicago.
“We know well that Bishop O’Regan is proclaiming that he has not deprived us of our church, that if it is in the hands of the Irish, it is because the Irish and not the French built it. ‘This is lie number two, which can be proven by more than a thousand witnesses.’
“We would like to know if he has forgotten the agreement (mentioned above) which he made us sign in bargaining for a French priest. He has the receipts for every cent that was due up to the time he took possession of our church. He then proffered these words to the French gentlemen who brought him the receipts: ‘It takes the French to collect money quick these hard times,’ (being in the winter).
“We must also add that we, French people, have paid for the very vestments that the bishop uses in his Cathedral, which he has taken from our church. But he uses them only on some high feasts, thinking too much of stolen property, to use them on a common day.
“Will it be out of place, here, to say that the cathedral of Chicago was built by the French, and that the lot which it is built on was given by a Frenchman? It is very reluctantly that we expose all these facts before the eyes of the public; but having waited patiently, during two long years, and having used all the influence we could command in France and Canada, to no purpose, we must resort to the sympathy of the public for justice, through the free press of the United States.
“Resolutions.
“Resolved, 1st. That the Right Rev. O’Regan, Bishop of Chicago, has entirely lost the confidence of the French and Canadian population of Chicago since he has taken away from us our church.
“Resolved, 2nd. That the Right Rev. O’Regan has published a base slander against the French and Canadian population of Chicago, when he said he took our church from our hands on the pretence that we could not pay for it.