What Father Hewit adds of Father Baker’s dispositions applies as well to all the Fathers.  In ceasing to be Redemptorists, they did not swerve from their original purpose in becoming religious.  None of them had grown discontented with his state or with his superiors.  They were all in the full fervor of the devotional spirit of the community, and as missionaries were generously wearing out their lives in the toil and hardship of its peculiar vocation.  But both parties became the instruments of a special providence, which made use of the wide diversities of temperament existing among men, and set apart Father Hecker and his companions, after a season of severe trial, for a new apostolate.  They did not choose it for themselves.  Father Hecker had aspirations, as we know, but he did not dream of realizing them through any separation whatever.  But Providence led the Holy See to change what had been a violent wrench into a peaceful division, exercising, in so doing, a divine authority accepted with equal obedience by all concerned.

What Father Hewit further says of Father Baker applies exactly to Father Hecker: 

“For the Congregation in which he was trained to the religious and ecclesiastical state he always retained a sincere esteem and affection.  He did not ask the Pope for a dispensation from his vows in order to be relieved from a burdensome obligation, but only on the condition that it seemed best to him to terminate the difficulty which had arisen that way.  When the dispensation was granted he did not change his life for a more easy one. . .  Let no one, therefore, who is disposed to yield to temptations against his vocation, and to abandon the religious state from weariness, tepidity, or any unworthy motive, think to find any encouragement in his example; for his austere, self-denying, and arduous life will give him only rebuke, and not encouragement.”

After the expulsion the General begged Father Hecker to make the convent his home till he was suited elsewhere, and Father Hecker, having thanked him for his kindness and stayed there that night, took lodgings the following day in a quiet street near the Propaganda.  During the seven months of his stay in Rome he frequently visited the General and his consultors, sometimes on business but at other times from courtesy and good feeling.

He at once presented the testimonials intended for the General to Cardinal Barnabo, Prefect of the Propaganda, who examined them in company with Archbishop Bedini, the Secretary of that Congregation.  As may be imagined, the attitude of these prelates was at first one of extreme reserve.  But every case gets a hearing in Rome, and that of this expelled religious, and therefore suspended priest, could be no exception.  A glance at the credentials, a short conversation with their bearer, a closer examination of the man and of his claim, produced a favorable impression and led to a determination to sift the matter thoroughly.  The principal letters were from Archbishop Hughes and Bishop Bayley.  The former spoke thus of Father Hecker:  “I have great pleasure in recommending him as a laborious, edifying, zealous, and truly apostolic priest.”