Booth escape route north

[Craig Hipkins]

Father Chiniquy left the Catholic Church after a disagreement with the Bishop of Chicago Anthony O' Regan. It is said that he was excommunicated from the Church, but Chiniquy denied that he had ever been excommunicated. The hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church is set up to where the Priest in a specific Diocese has to be obedient to the Bishop, who in turn is obedient to the Cardinal, and the Cardinal obedient to the Pope. From what I have been able to gather, Chiniquy, was a sort of renegade who wanted to start a French-Canadian Catholic colony somewhere on the Illinois frontier. Of course, O'Regan was Irish so there seems to have been some sort of cultural difference between the two which led to bad blood. Interestingly, Abraham Lincoln represented Chiniquy after he was sued for libel, and Lincoln was able to work out an agreement.

Craig

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Chiniquy's extremely long and somewhat fictitious book is called Fifty Years in the Church of Rome. He does his best to try and disparage the Church and blame the Jesuits and Pope Pius IX as being complicit in Lincoln's death. He is not convincing!