A letter on March 28, 1877, from Father Hecker gave Mother Maddalena much encouragement as she strove to found the Poor Clare life in America:
It seems to me that you have now obtained all the conditions most favorable to the accomplishment of your design in coming to the United States. It now rests with you to make the beautiful flower of Divine Contemplation take root in the virginal soil of the Church in our Young Republic.  I cannot conceive a noble! design, a greater work and one fraught with more precious fruits.  It will be my constant prayer that God may give you the grace of renewing the spirit of your Holy Foundress, St. Clare, and be the nucleus of gathering together those souls on whom God has bestowed the vocation of contemplative life.