On 7 June 1875 he was elected as the first Provincial Consulter of the Roman province (he moved to Vetralla around this stage for a brief period) and he later became the Vice-Provincial Superior in July 1876. In the General Chapter on 4 May 1878 he was elected as the Superior General of the order. and his first term ran until 1884. In this position he worked hard to reconcile rival factions in the order and also founded new houses abroad (more so in Latin America as well as advancing the Bulgarian mission) and reformed the regulations of the order; he was firm in the conviction that a return to the original spirit and the Rule of the founder could be the singular formula for reviving the spirit of the charism. In 1887 he accepted a request from Cardinal Francis Patrick Moran to send Passionists to Australia in 1887.