Church as a cardinal, he had boldly defended the advantages to religion of the American system of separation of Church and state. It was a conviction which he never lost. A month before he died he declared that he was “more and more convinced that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest instrument of government that ever issued from the hand of man.” In recognition of Gibbons’ many contributions to American public life, his friend, former president Theodore Roosevelt, told him in 1917: