reach the United States until 1810. When it arrived, Egan traveled to St. Peter's Pro-cathedral in Baltimore, where he was ordained bishop by Carroll, assisted by Benedict Joseph Flaget and Jean-Louis de Cheverus, who had been appointed to bishoprics but had not yet been consecrated. Egan chose St. Mary's to serve as his pro-cathedral in Philadelphia. Even before Egan's installation, Philadelphia Catholics began to raise funds to expand the church in accordance with its new prominence in the diocese. After their ordinations, the new bishops planned a council of the American church leadership for the near future; in fact, they did not meet until 1829, long after Egan's death. Trusteeism dispute Egan's elevation to the episcopate worsened an existing conflict in the American church: the dispute over trusteeism. In Europe, the Church owned property and directly controlled its parishes through the clergy. In the United States, however, early Catholic churches were typically founded by laymen who purchased the property and erected the church buildings. The laypeople accordingly demanded some control over the administration of the parish, even after the arrival of clergy from Europe who, like Egan, held the traditional view of parish organization. The dispute also had nationalist elements to it, as the heavily German parish of Holy Trinity resented the imposition of an Irish bishop instead of one of their own. When Holy Trinity's pastor left for a new assignment in Maryland in 1811, the trustees there were perturbed at Egan's temporary appointment of an Irish priest, Patrick Kenny, to lead the parish, until a German priest could be found (a German priest, Francis Roloff, was assigned the following year). Egan's own research into the issue showed that the trustees had conveyed St. Mary's Church to the previous pastor, Robert Harding, and then to his heirs, but the trustees did not consider that property transfer to have extinguished their role in the church's leadership. By 1811, Egan's worsening health caused him to accept the assistance of two priests at St. Mary's, James Harold and his nephew, William Vincent Harold. Egan and the trustees became further embroiled in a dispute about clerical salaries, a situation possibly made worse by the decline in shipping income in the port city caused by the outbreak of the War of 1812. Egan also came to believe the Harolds were making the situation worse by taking pro-clergy positions that were more extreme than Egan's