the librarian for Georgetown College, and was proud to note that when he began, it was "a mere handful of some two hundred books and [he] left it in 1831 a great collection of twenty thousand volumes". He also had command of numerous languages in which he preached and wrote: English, Flemish, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Latin. Ordination Van de Velde was ordained on September 25, 1827, by the same Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal of Baltimore who had offered seminary educations to the Belgian men Van de Velde successfully recruited to the Jesuits. After his ordination Van de Velde completed his Georgetown education and, for two years' was the chaplain for the nearby Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, a finishing school for Catholic girls. In 1829, he took over the missions of Rockville and Rock Creek in Montgomery County, Maryland. Professor In 1831, Van de Velde was sent to a professorship at the new Jesuit College of St. Louis, Missouri. where he taught rhetoric and mathematics. The college became the University of St. Louis in 1833. Van de Velde became a fully professed member of the Jesuits by taking his final vows in 1837, and by 1840, he was president of the Saint Louis University. Vice-Provincial Van de Velde continued to rise within the ranks of his order. In 1843 he became Vice-Provincial of the Society of Jesus. Three years later, as Western Provincial of the Jesuits, he attended an important council in Baltimore. He returned to St. Louis with a difficult itinerary by train through Boston, Albany, and Detroit, arriving in Chicago on June 13, 1846. He was hosted there by Chicago's bishop, William Quarter. Three days later, Van de Velde departed via stagecoach for the trip from Chicago to St. Louis. Two years after their brief meeting, Bishop Quarter of Chicago died suddenly on April 10, 1848. The papal bull announcing Van de Velde's appointment as the next Bishop of Chicago arrived in the United States in December 1848. Bishoprics On February 11, 1849—Sexagesima Sunday—Van de Velde was consecrated Bishop of Chicago in the Church of St. Francis Xavier, attached to the University of St. Louis. The consecration was performed by Peter Richard Kenrick, Archbishop of St. Louis. Pastoral pattern On his way to Chicago, Van de Velde stopped and said Mass in the southern regions of his new diocese; in St. Louis, Missouri and in the Illinois towns