The reform of the Roman Curia was another undertaking, which did much to simplify the government of the Church. The various Roman Congregations were founded by Sixtus V to study questions submitted to the decision of the pope and to deal with any legal questions that might arise; and as persons of experience and mature judgement alone should deal with these matters, various committees were formed, each of which attended to its own particular branch of business. But the organization of the different congregations needed to be adapted to the requirements of the present day. Pius X, with the practical spirit which distinguished all his undertakings, completely remodelled the curia, fixing the number of congregations at thirteen, and defining clearly the work of each. The constitution "Sapienti consilio" on this matter instituted also many other important reforms in the tribunals and offices of the curia. The purchase of the Palazzo Mariscotti, assigned to the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, enabled Pius X to carry out another long-cherished plan, for the thorough reform of his own diocese, inadequate in its organization to the needs of the present day. Want of space, which had been the chief difficulty in the way of reorganization, having been thus supplied for, the necessary reforms were at once set on foot. In many other important matters the needs of modern times called for the simplification and amendment of methods that had become obsolete. The reform and codification of canon law was another laborious work carried on by the pope for eleven years, and brought to a conclusion under his successor Benedict XV. With affectionate interest the pope watched the progress of Catholicism in England. "If there is any Church in the whole Christian world," he wrote in January 1912, on the occasion of the founding of the two new ecclesiastical provinces of Birmingham and Liverpool, "which merits the special care and forethought of the Apostolic See, it is certainly the Church of the English, which, happily founded among the Britons by St. Eleutherius[*] and still more happily established through apostolic men by Gregory the Great, was subsequently made famous by the numbers of its children distinguished by the holiness of their lives or by the martyr's death courageously suffered for Christ." [*] History scholars seem now agreed that the story of a mission sent to Britain by Pope St. Eleutherius in the later second century rests on a misunderstanding. Christianity was certainly introduced into Britain during the Roman occupation, but the circumstances are not known.