Reports from Rome were favorable;
Archbishop Ireland's prospects looked rosy.
But the post of Cardinal is so eminent that there are always
several candidates for each vacancy. I do not know whether or not
it came about through one of Archbishop Ireland's rivals, or
through "Dear Maria's" own indiscretion, but the fact leaked out
that President Roosevelt was personally interested in Archbishop
Ireland's success. That settled the Archbishop. The Hierarchy
would never consent to be influenced by an American President,
who was also a Protestant. It might take instructions from the
Emperor of Austria or the King of Spain; it had even allowed the
German Kaiser, also a Protestant, indirectly but effectually to
block the election of Cardinal Rampolla to be Pope in 1903; but
the hint that the Archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, might be
made Cardinal because the American President respected him, could
not be tolerated. The President's letters beginning "Dear Maria"
went gayly through the newspapers of the world, and the man in
the street everywhere wondered how Roosevelt could have been so
indiscreet as to have trusted so imprudent a zealot.
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