[1] His politics were traditional and conservative, showing no inclination to compromise with government attempts to restrict the role of the Church in the public sphere.
It survived by being integrated into a congregation with a similar commitment to missionary work, the Society of the Holy Heart of Mary, founded by Francis Libermann in 1842.
Until Le Floch's research, the Holy Ghost Fathers had regarded Libermann, whose life was well documented and whose writings they knew well, as their founder.
During his tenure the number of seminarians increased from about 100 to 140 at the start of World War I and to 207 when he left,[6] as French bishops sent more students to Rome as the government restricted their own activities.
Like-minded officials in the Roman Curia saw he was named a consultor to several dicasteries, including the Holy Office, which in turn enhanced the seminary's reputation.
His influence in Rome made him enemies among French prelates who did not share his view of church-state relations and papal supremacy.
[2] In the fall of 1918, reflecting views widely held in France, an anonymous French author, likely Louis Canet [fr], a young government bureaucrat, published a detailed indictment of Pope Benedict XV's role in the world war.
He charged Benedict with playing a political role under the cover of the Church's spiritual mission and favoring a victory by Germany and its allies.
Others named Le Floch in connection with the suppression of books, decried the Seminary's influence on the selection of bishops and charged it was responsible for the adoption of the Roman collar in place of the French clergy's traditional clerical bands or rabat [fr].
[9] Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the outspoken critic of the Second Vatican Council who incurred excommunication for consecrating bishops without papal approval in 1988, credited Le Floch with providing him with an orthodox seminary formation, "leaving aside all personal ideas in order to embrace the mind of the Church".