 After his return, Neale worked tirelessly to maintain the works of the Society from prior to the Suppression and to restore the Society of Jesus as an official Order.In 1803, the members of the Maryland Mission, consisting of the surviving former Jesuits, learned that, two years earlier, Pope Pius VII had approved the continuation of the Society in Russia, where the decree of suppression had never been implemented by the Empress Catherine the Great.As a Russian Orthodox ruler, she had no obligation to obey a papal order, and she valued the educational works of the Jesuits in the territories she ruled, particularly Poland.