The complaints about Bishop Rappe mounted in the 1860s. Priests of Irish birth and descent protested Rappe’s unpopular pew rent fees and annual seminary tax, his habit of assigning French-and German-speaking priests to Irish parishes and his frequent transfers of Irish priests. There were outcries when Rappe replaced an Irish seminary rector with a French one and admitted to favoring bi-lingual French- and German-speaking seminarians over Irish ones. Rappe saw himself as counteracting the barriers of nationality as he struggled to build a cohesive diocese. A group of Irish-born priests began to meet to formulate a complaint to Rome, ultimately forcing Bishop Rappe to resign from the Diocese of Cleveland in August of 1870.