He visited Rome in 1883 at the head of the delegation of American prelates sent to represent the affairs of the church in the United States at the Vatican, and to outline the work to come before the third Plenary Council to meet at Baltimore in 1884. Pope Leo XIII. showed Archbishop Gibbons many favors; and among them appointed him to preside over the third Plenary Council.
When the third Plenary Council met, in 1884, the progress and development of the Roman Catholic church in the United States made necessary the enactment of new decrees, which as presiding officer he helped forward, and these acts and decrees were approved by the ecclesiastical authorities. In acknowledgment of the approval of the action and course of Archbishop Gibbons, Leo XIII, created him cardinal, June 7, 1886, and he selected the twenty-fifth anniversary of his ordination as priest, June 30, 1886, as the date on which he would be invested with the insignia of the rank of cardinal. The occasion was one of impressive religious solemnity and an embassy from Leo XIII. brought the following message: "Present to Cardinal Gibbons our affectionate paternal benediction. We remember him with the most cordial esteem and believe we could not confer the hat upon a more worth}- prelate." The Pope was represented in the person of Archbishop Kenrick of St. Louis who bestowed the insignia of his office upon the newly made cardinal; and he received the apostolic benediction at the hands of the Pope at the Vatican in Rome the next year and he was admitted to membership in the College of Cardinals, being the twenty-fifth in succession. While in Rome he interpreted to the Pope the democratic spirit of American catholicity in respect to the labor organizations in the United States and the actual relations existing between the employers and the employed. He was installed as pastor of his titular church, May 25, 1887, and was assigned to the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, a church of great antiquity on the Tiber. He laid the comer stone of the Catholic University of America in Washington, District of Columbia, May 24, 1888; dedicated the Divinity Building November 13, 1889, and was the chancellor of the institution from its foundation. He was given an assistant in the person of Bishop Curtis formerly of Wilmington, Delaware, in 1896, at his own request and by reason of advancing age. In 1903 he went to Rome to take part in the election of a successor to Leo XIII., deceased. His simple and unostentatious kindliness which endeared him to the
