players gathered in Bauer's room where Marshall Johnston summarized the team's feeling that, "The shepherd and his flock have been fleeced". The national team played an exhibition tour in Europe after the Olympics then had an audience with Pope Paul VI in the Vatican City on February 15, 1964. When Bauer returned to Canada, he met with the CAHA to discuss the negative academic impact of the national team. He felt that the players had been capable students who were aware of the academic sacrifices in advance, but that representing Canada had been more important to them than their studies. Despite that seven of the players had dropped out of their courses and nine others completed less than half of their courses, Bauer felt it possible to find other methods to prevent academic impacts for the students on the national team. At the CAHA general meeting in May 1964, Ahearne clarified that the decision to place Canada fourth in the standings was supported by the IIHF statutes and that no rules were changed. Former CAHA president and past IIHF president Robert Lebel agreed that the correct decision was made despite the accusations. At the same meeting, Bauer was given approval to continue the national team program and transitioned from coaching into a managing and advisory role. National team from 1965 to 1969 Bauer travelled with the team regularly on international tours during the late 1960s. He attracted a following as a priest in Europe, and conducted mass at various locations including motels with a portable altar, a chapel within the Embassy of France in Moscow, churches in Prague and houses of his friends. While in Austria he conducted mass on several occasions at the Mariatrost Basilica, a noted pilgrimage site in Graz. The CAHA merged the national team into the Winnipeg Maroons in 1965, and relocated the program to a new home base in Winnipeg. The Maroons were one of the best senior ice hockey teams in Canada at the time, and their coach Gord Simpson continued in the same role for the national team. Players on the team attending UBC were transferred to the University of Manitoba, and Bauer continued his recruitments efforts. He saw the merger as the beginning of a truly national team based in the geographic centre of the country. Bauer assembled a mix of veteran and student players for the 1965 Ice Hockey World Championships.