Bourget planned to commission a scale reproduction of Rome's St Peter's Basilica to serve as a replacement, and engaged first Victor Bourgeau (who claimed such a scale reproduction could not be achieved) and then Joseph Michaud to design the new cathedral. However, work did not eventually commence until 1875. In 1894, subsequent to Bourget's death, the structure was completed and consecrated as St James Cathedral, and in 1955 was rededicated as Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral. Involvement in secular politics Institut Canadien de Montréal By the time of the second provincial council held in Quebec City in 1854, Bourget had become distrustful of the Institut Canadien de Montréal, a liberal literary association which Bourget saw as anti-clericist and subversive. He used his influence at the provincial council to cause a disciplinary regulation to be drawn up, dated June 4, 1854, declaring that members of "literary institutes [at which] readings are given there which are anti-religious" were not to be admitted to the Roman Catholic sacraments. Despite the regulation, eleven members of the Institut were elected to the Legislative Assembly in late 1854, where they began to campaign for the separation of church and state in education through the institution of nondenominational schools. In 1858 Bourget commenced a series of pastoral letters attacking liberals, anti-clericists, and the Institut Canadien. The first of these, on March 10, 1858, focused on what he saw as the evils of the French Revolution and revolutions generally, which he alleged were caused by the circulation of immoral books. The letter was the focus of a meeting by the Institut Canadien on April 13, 1854, where Institut member Hector Fabre suggested the Institut self-censor its own access to the purportedly immoral books. No resolution was reached. On April 30, 1858, Bourget wrote a second letter which demanded the removal of "evil books" from the collection of the Institut Canadien, backed by the threat of excommunication for all those who visited its library or attended its sessions and readings. As a result of this and the April 13 meeting, a significant number of Institut members including Hector Fabre left to form a competing organisation, the Institut Canadien-Français. In a third letter dated May 31, 1858 Bourget directly attacked the remaining leaders of the Institut Canadien, as well as the liberal paper Le Pays, as anti-clericists and revolutionaries, and argued that the mere idea of freedom of religious