The del Vals were an Aragonese family originally from Zaragoza, claiming descent from a twelfth-century Breton crusader; the surname Merry came from a line of Irish merchants from County Waterford, Ireland, who settled in the late eighteenth century in Seville, Spain.
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He received his first Holy Communion at Sacred Heart Church on Richmond Hill, and later enrolled at the northern seminary of Ushaw College in County Durham in northern England.
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His mother's family owned a large villa in Boscombe, a suburb of Bournemouth.
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Under Rampolla's successor, Rafael Merry del Val, Le Nordez was in 1904 summoned to Rome, to consult with the new Pope Pius X.
In May and June 1907, when Bisleti was still a Monsignor and Maggiodomo di Sua Santita, the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862-1947) who was in Rome painting a large portrait of Pope Pius X (North American College, Via dei Umilta, Rome), and had painted two portraits of Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, also completed a portrait of Bisleti, a fact that was recorded in the New York Herald, Sunday, December 27, 1908.
Bishop Louis Walsh of Portland, Maine, a member of the administrative board, saw in the Consistorial Congregation's action "a dangerous underhand blow from Boston, aided by Philadelphia, who both realized at our last meeting that they could not control the Bishops of this country and they secured the two chief powers of the Consistorial Congregation, Cardinals De Lai and Del Val sic to suppress all common action."