Speaking on the evening of Monday 4 December 1967, while Cardinal Spellman lay in state at St Patrick's Cathedral in New York, Neville looked ahead to the funeral that Thursday: "On Thursday they'll all come to see this and oh, what a show it will be! I saw the last one in New York City. It was beautiful pageantry, all the colors as they walked down Fifth Avenue." He described the monks in black, brown and white habits and the ranks moving up to the cardinals, then turned it against itself - they would put him in the crypt not knowing that at that very moment he was restored to life, a young man of about twenty, full of vim and vigour, doing everything he had denied himself while here, unless in that interval he had been born from above.