December 1870 but it burned down just a month later in January 1871. During Lootens' tenure, the Catholic population of Idaho dropped from 15,000 to 1,000. In 1866, when the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore had proposed creating a vicariate, Idaho was still in the fever of its first boom. However, by the 1870s, the placer mining industry was beginning to fail and large numbers of miners were leaving. In March 1873, Lootens wrote: "The Catholic population of the Vicariate Apostolic of Idaho having dwindled away to such an extent that the remainder does no longer afford us...the bare necessaries of life." His health also began to suffer and he submitted his resignation, which was accepted by Rome on February 27, 1876. It would be more than eight years before a successor, fellow Belgian Alphonse Joseph Glorieux, was appointed. Later life and death Lootens returned to British Columbia, where he began his priestly ministry, and was named an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Vancouver Island. As the oldest cleric in the diocese, he laid the cornerstone of the new St. Andrew's Cathedral at Victoria in 1890. In 1895 he published a book on the Gregorian chant. Lootens died in Victoria on January 12, 1898, at age 70. He is buried at Our Lady of Assumption Church Cemetery in Saanich. See also Historical list of the Catholic bishops of the United States References 1827 births 1898 deaths 19th-century Belgian Roman Catholic priests Roman Catholic bishops of Boise 19th-century Roman Catholic bishops in the United States Belgian emigrants to the United States Belgian Roman Catholic titular bishops Clergy from Bruges