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Soon as Bishop Dougherty arrived in his See city, Vigan, and found his residence sacked, its library scattered, its chapel fouled from having been used as a stable and the cathedral in possession of an Aglipayan priest, this sturdy son of Patrick and Bridget Dougherty girded for action. He gathered a band of loyal Catholics, braved a shower of stones to wrest the cathedral from the Aglipayan. Arming his flock he toured his diocese reopening and reconsecrating churches, confirming as many as 70,000 Filipino children at a time, spending weeks on horseback and at times paddling his own canoe through the jungle. He visited a colony of Catholic lepers alone, his guides dreading the plague spot. With his own strong arms he dug the grave of a fellow bishop he found dead of cholera and deserted by his servants. He opened schools and missions, imported clergy, sisters and monks to staff them. Finally, instead of going to court over questions of property, Bishop Dougherty built up Filipino public opinion against the time Obispo Aglipay should bring suit, guessing rightly that Aglipay would lose.
In 1915 Bishop Dougherty felt that his job was done, that the tropics were telling on even his robust frame, and so he intimated to the Vatican. He was named bishop of Buffalo, where he sold Liberty Bonds, built schools and churches, liquidated a $1,100,000 debt on a new cathedral. In 1918 he became Archbishop of Philadelphia where ever since the name of "Dockerty" (as many of his flock pronounce it) has been a potent one. Strictest disciplinarian of the four U. S. Cardinals, he rules his clergy with an iron hand, insists on punctuality, obedience, deference. To a young shipboard visitor on his recent trip he growled: "Boy, take off your cap!" Philadelphia newspapers know better than to print anything the Archbishop might take offense at, for a boycott may fall such as once forced the Public Ledger to apologize abjectly for a story quoting Katharine Mayo in disparagement of Philippine missions. More interested in archdiocesan than in national Catholic affairs, Cardinal Dougherty typically interpreted the Church's attitude toward the cinema in his own way, declaring a complete boycott which, though no longer enforced, still stands. Austere as his personal life is, he has lived in two costly Philadelphia suburban mansions, indignantly parting with the first—a bequest—when he found it was mortgaged for $90,000.
After he became Archbishop of Philadelphia, Dr. Dougherty denied publicly that he had solicited the post. Whether or not he subsequently voiced to the Vatican his claims—eminently just as they were—to be Philadelphia's first Cardinal, he was given his red hat in 1921, three months before the present Pope was raised to the purple. As a scholar with whom Pius XI enjoyed many a long chat in later years, as a doughty fighter for the Church whose solid accomplishments spoke for themselves, Cardinal Dougherty hardly needed to point out that he was the man to represent the Pope at the Manila Congress.