In the summer of 1889 Rudd was sent to Europe, where he
met Cardinal Lavigerie. The cardinal had organized an antislavery conference that was to be held that summer in Lucerne. The exact circumstances regarding the origin and the funding of Rudd's trip are not completely clear. Some indication is given, however, by a news-paper column that originally appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper. In the July 6 issue of the American Catholic Tribune for that year, a column appeared entitled "Catholics in Boston" under the byline of a certain J. Gordon Street.
Street informed the readers that
Cardinal Lavigerie was arranging a
conference against slavery to be held in Lucerne and that he
had appealed to "prominent colored men in the United States asking them to
take an interest in the matter." Black Catholics
in Boston had responded to the appeal, and Robert L. Ruffin, a prominent black
Catholic and a collaborator with Rudd on the Tribune, had been chosen to represent Boston at the
conference in Lucerne. Street's article went on to say that John Boyle
O'Reilly, the editor of Boston's Catholic
paper, the Pilot, had begun a campaign to raise funds for Ruffin's passage." In the
same article, Street wrote, "There
is another black man ... that the colored Catholics must sec that he goes to Lucerne - I mean
Daniel A. Rudd of Cincinnati."
