in a popular election for a four-year term. His successor was deposed by the Liberals in 1867. But two years later he was reelected, and then again in 1875. During his period in office, he propelled his nation forward, all the while uniting him more closely to Catholicism. Personally pious (he attended Mass daily, as well as visiting the Blessed Sacrament; he received Holy Communion every Sunday—a rare practice before Pope Pius X—and was active in a sodality), he made it one of the first duties of his government to promote and support Catholicism. Catholicism was the official religion of Ecuador, but by the terms of a new Concordat, the State's power over appointment of bishops inherited from Spain was eliminated at García Moreno's insistence. The 1869 constitution made Catholicism the religion of the State and required that both candidates and voters be Catholic. He was the only ruler in the world to protest the Pope's loss of the Papal States, and two years later had the legislature consecrate Ecuador to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. One of his biographers writes that after this public consecration, he was marked for death by German freemasons. García Moreno generated some animosity with his friendship toward the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). During a period of exile, he helped some displaced Jesuits from Germany find refuge in Ecuador. He had also advocated legislation that would outlaw secret societies. While the politics of his age were extremely convoluted and murky, that he was elected to a second term clearly indicates his popular appeal, both with the Catholic Church and with the masses. His vigorous support of universal literacy and education based on the French model was both controversial and bold. Through both his parents, García Moreno was descended from noble Spanish families whose lineages go back to the Middle Ages. His father, Gabriel García y Gómez de Tama was a Spaniard from Soria, descended from the house of the Dukes of Osuna, and an officer of the Spanish Royal Navy. García Moreno's mother was a member of a wealthy and prominent Spanish-Criollo aristocratic family descended from the Imperial family Komnenos, the house of the Dukes of Infantado and the first Conquerors and Spanish nobility arrived to South America. Her father was Count of Moreno and Governor-General of Guatemala, before moving to Guayaquil, where he was the Perpetual Military Governor. Among his other relatives were his