and even to reduce the number to zero, it forbade the wearing of religious garb outside of church or religious premises, and excluded offenders from a trial by jury. Carranza declared himself opposed to the final draft of Articles 3, 5, 24, 27, 123 and 130, but the Constitutional Congress contained only 85 conservatives and centrists who were close to Carranza's brand of liberalism. Against them were 132 delegates who were more radical. Article 24 stated: "Every man shall be free to choose and profess any religious belief as long as it is lawful and it cannot be punished under criminal law. The Congress shall not be authorized to enact laws either establishing or prohibiting a particular religion. Religious ceremonies of public nature shall be ordinarily performed at the temples. Those performed outdoors shall be regulated under the law." Crisis After a period of peaceful resistance to the enforcement of the anticlerical provisions of the Constitution by Mexican Catholics, skirmishing broke out in 1926, and violent uprisings began in 1927. The government called the rebels Cristeros since they invoked the name of Jesus Christ under the title of "Cristo Rey" or Christ the King, and the rebels soon used the name themselves. The rebellion is known for the Feminine Brigades of St. Joan of Arc, a brigade of women who assisted the rebels in smuggling guns and ammunition, and for certain priests who were tortured and murdered in public and later canonized by Pope John Paul II. The rebellion eventually ended by diplomatic means brokered by the American Ambassador Dwight W. Morrow, with financial relief and logistical assistance provided by the Knights of Columbus. The rebellion attracted the attention of Pope Pius XI, who issued a series of papal encyclicals from 1925 to 1937. On November 18, 1926, he issued Iniquis afflictisque ("On the Persecution of the Church in Mexico") to denounce the violent anticlerical persecution in Mexico. Despite the government's promises, the persecution of the Church continued. In response, Pius issued Acerba animi on September 29, 1932. Background Violence on a limited scale occurred throughout the early 1920s, but it never rose to the level of widespread conflict. In 1926, the passage of stringent anticlerical criminal laws and their enforcement by the Calles Law, together with peasant revolts in the heavily-Catholic Bajío and the clampdown on popular religious celebrations such as fiestas, caused scattered guerrilla operations to coalesce into