1833, Gómez Farías and Santa Anna would be elected president and vice president respectively. They would share and alternate offices, and when Gomez Pedraza's term legally ended on April 1, he actually passed down power to Gómez Farías, as Santa Anna was not in the capital at the time. This has been suspected as a ploy by Santa Anna to gauge public opinion regarding Gómez Farías’ intended radical reforms aimed at the Catholic Church and at the army. The Anti-Clerical Campaign With Gómez Farías’ ascension to power, the press started to become increasingly anticlerical. The clergy was accused of being worldly, greedy hypocrites, and the Bible was attacked as full of absurdities and falsehoods from an ignorant era. The authority of the pope was also attacked. Progressives proclaimed that Mexican independence was not only from Spain but from the pope as well, and the clergy were attacked as subject to a foreign power. Catholic priests were insulted and called ministers of Huītzilōpōchtli (who received human sacrifices), Pharisees, and aristocrats. Anti-clerical writers also quoted the speeches of the French Revolutionary Assembly in favor of their cause. Priests were placed under government surveillance. Minister Miguel Ramos Arizpe decreed that papal bulls and other papal proclamations could not be published in Mexico without authority of the government. In keeping with the political atmosphere, it was proposed that congress take no break during Holy Week of 1833, but the measure failed to pass. The state of Mexico at this time governed by Lorenzo de Zavala, lifted the legal obligations pay tithes. The congress of Veracruz and other state legislatures passed decrees to seize the goods of religious communities, and then the state of Veracruz suppressed all monasteries. This only provoked fears that the government was about to suppress all religion, and Gómez Farías had to release a message explaining that he had no such intentions. On October 27, 1833, a measure was passed lifting the legal obligation to pay tithes nationally. A commission of the chamber of deputies recommended nationalizing all church properties, but this was not passed as a law. On November 6, 1833, the legal obligation to fulfill monastic vows was lifted. On December 17, 1833, a measure was passed granting the Mexican government the power to make appointments to the church hierarchy, the so-called patronato. Previous appointments that had been made without government approval were declared annulled. The reformers hoped that