of Baltimore to take the proposed decrees of the Church in the United States to Rome for Papal approval. He departed in late spring and returned on November 28, 1852. Rome Van de Velde had two audiences with Pope Pius IX and reiterated his health problems. The pope showed the "greatest affability". If Bishop Van de Velde was not to be allowed to resign the bishopric completely, he pleaded for a transfer. One year from the time of his return to Chicago (at the end of 1852) he was installed as bishop in the warm-weather state of Mississippi. Bishop Van de Velde was appointed to take over the diocese of Natchez, Mississippi, on July 29, 1853, a year after the death of Bishop John Joseph Chanche, the founding bishop in that state. Bishop Van de Velde left Chicago on November 3 and arrived in Natchez November 23, 1853, and took formal possession of his see on December 18. It had taken Van de Velde twenty months since attending the 1852 Plenary Council and asking them to endorse his request of resignation from the See of Chicago to actually get to Natchez and assume his new bishopric. The process of his transfer to Natchez was long and arduous, and certainly exceeded the time he actually was bishop there. Natchez, Mississippi The new Bishop of Natchez began an ambitious and much-needed program of land acquisition and repairs to church properties. One of his accomplishments was to gather the bones on the surface of the ground at the old Spanish cemetery and deposit them in a crypt under the sanctuary of St. Mary Cathedral. But, on October 23, 1855, only months after his arrival, he slipped on the front steps of his residence and broke his leg. Yellow fever was epidemic in the city at that time and had killed forty of his parishioners. Already suffering a slight fever from the inflammation of his broken leg, Bishop Van de Velde caught yellow fever as well. Bishop Van de Velde made his final Confession twice, once in the evening and again in the morning, and the young priest at his bedside reported that he himself was so overcome that the Bishop had to help him with the wording of the ritual of Last Rites. Initially unable to take Communion due to the severity of his symptoms, the young priest considered it a special blessing