The French liberals particularly admired Father Hecker for his love of modern times and modern liberty and his devotion to liberal Catholicism. Indeed, they took him as a kind of patron saint. Inspired by Father Hecker's life and character, the activist French priests undertook the task of persuading their fellow-priests to accept the political system, and then to break out of their isolation, put themselves in touch with the intellectual life of the country, and take an active part in the work of social . In 1897, the movement received a new impetus when Monsignor Denis J. O'Connell, former Rector of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, spoke on behalf of Father Hecker's ideas at the Catholic Congress in Fribourg.