Under his leadership the first White Fathers missions were established in the French Sudan (Mali) at Ségou and Timbuktu.

He arrived in Algiers in February 1873 with his co-student Léonce Bridoux, the future bishop, to begin his novitiate.

In 1875 he was elected a member of the General Council of the White Fathers, and was also given direction of the Arab novitiate or Petit Noviciat.

In September 1880 he was named assistant general and returned to Algiers, where Cardinal Charles Lavigerie gave him direction of the novitiate.

Lavigerie named him superior of the fourth caravan but then, perhaps due to shortage of personnel, cancelled this appointment and asked him to return to Jerusalem.

[4] The cardinal would have preferred the more outgoing Augustin Hacquard to head the apostolic vicariate, but the White Fathers council had selected Toulotte due to his saintly reputation.

[4] Toulotte based himself at Ghardaïa, Algeria, and travelled widely to visit the existing White Fathers missions and to found new ones.

[8] The Ministry of the Colonies issued the authorization on 9 November 1894 and on 25 December 1894 the first caravan, four White Fathers, left from Marseille.

[9] The long trip of several months took him to the loop of the Niger River and to the Atlantic coast at Conakry in what is now Guinea.

His request was immediately accepted by the Holy See on the advice of Bishop Léon Livinhac, superior of the White Fathers, who had noted his extreme physical and mental exhaustion.