He was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and, in October 1861, shortly after his return to Europe, was appointed French auditor at Rome.

[4] Lavigerie landed in Africa on 11 May 1868, when the great famine was already making itself felt, and he began in November to collect the orphans into villages.

Contact with the natives during the famine caused Lavigerie to entertain exaggerated hopes for their general conversion, and his enthusiasm was such that he offered to resign his archbishopric in order to devote himself entirely to the missions.

[3] The later years of his life were spent in ardent anti-slavery propaganda and his eloquence moved large audiences in London, as well as in Paris, Brussels and other parts of the continent.

He sponsored the education of Adrien Atiman, a medical student who had been ransomed from slavery by the White Fathers, at the University of Malta.

[8] He hoped, by organizing a fraternity of armed laymen as pioneers, to restore fertility to the Sahara; but this community did not succeed, and was dissolved before his death.

In 1890, Lavigerie appeared in the new character of a politician and arranged with Pope Leo XIII to make an attempt to reconcile the church with the republic.

[9] He invited the officers of the Mediterranean squadron to lunch at Algiers, and, practically renouncing his monarchical sympathies, to which he clung as long as the comte de Chambord was alive, expressed his support of the republic, and emphasized it by having the Marseillaise played by a band of his Pères Blancs.

[2] There is an abundance of literature published on the life of Charles Lavigerie, much of which has been written by members of the missionary order he founded, the White Fathers, and therefore can be biased.

Churchman, Prophet and Missionary (London 1994), translation of: Le cardinal Lavigerie 1852-1892: L’Église, l’Afrique et la France (Paris 1992).