Gabriel García Moreno

Ecuador’s Saintly President

WE LIVE IN an age which is almost completely devoid of Christian statesmen. In their stead, we are today ruled by faceless bureaucrats and vapid masters of spin. Gentlemen once sought public office in the hopes of ensuring order and the public good while dark and knavish men sought the same in their lust for power. The politicians of today, meanwhile, tend to be of neither inspiration but rather seem all too often to have engaged upon the ‘career’ of ‘public servant’ because they lack any of the skills necessary to succeed in any real, productive employ, station, or vocation. Given the sad state of affairs in our day, we must look to the past — to another age and indeed another continent — in our search for models of Christian leadership in the temporal realm of a modern republic. In this search, the name of the journalist, scholar, statesman, and saint, President GABRIEL GARCÍA MORENO of Ecuador, stands taller than any other in the Americas.

Gabriel García Moreno was born to a Spanish family in Ecuador on Christmas Eve, 1821. The youngest of eight children, the untimely death of his father meant the family could not afford a formal education for young Gabriel. However, assisted by his mother, the young boy was tutored by Fr. Betancourt, a close friend of the García family. Gabriel proved to be exceptionally gifted in terms of academics, to such an extent that he was admitted to the University in Quito where he earned his undergraduate degree.

Ecuador at the time was riven with internal conflict. Following independence from Spain, authority was absent from the country and a group of liberal oligarchs eventually emerged as the power in the land. The Liberales were fervently opposed to the power and influence of the Catholic Church in Ecuador, and sought to enforce a complete separation between Church and State. Looking to the United States for inspiration, they wished to destroy the semi-feudal land system in which great estates acted as virtually self-sufficient communal entities with great social stability. Instead, they preferred to practice a system of free enterprise unrestrained by Christian charity and the moral power of the Church. These oligarchs found political expression in the Liberal party, while socially they were organised in the Masonic lodges of the capital and major towns and cities.

García Moreno took to writing essays and pamphlets attacking corruption in the government, which led to his banishment from Ecuador. Returning, he founded the journal La Nación in 1853 to oppose the tendency of the government to exploit the mass of the people purely for the benefit of those who happened to be in power. Before even the third number of La Nación was published, the government shut down the publication and forced García Moreno into exile yet again. Despite his absence from his homeland, he was elected as the Senator of Guayaquail. But when García Moreno arrived in Quito to assume his representative duties, he was arrested and sent into exile for yet a third time.

It was in Paris, that city where the light of ancient martyrs and the darkness of Jacobin tyranny dwell side by side, that García Moreno decided to spend his latest period of exile. The Parisian exile provided García Moreno with an opportunity for intense study, developing his knowledge in the hope that he might one day return to serve his native land of Ecuador. He worked for sixteen hours of the day, and claimed that, had the day consisted of forty-eight hours instead of twenty-four, he would then study for forty hours a day instead of sixteen. Amidst the various academies, libraries, and institutions of learning in Paris, García Moreno proved a true polymath, studying higher mathematics, chemistry, political science, and investigating the French system of public education. Charles Coulombe, in his superb essay ‘Quest for a Catholic State‘, quotes the great French homme de lettres, Louis Veuillot:

In a foreign land, solitary and unknown, García Moreno made himself fit to rule. He learned all that was necessary for him to know in order to govern a nation, formerly Christian but now falling fast into an almost savage condition… Paris, which is at once a Christian and a heathen city, is the very place where the lesson he needed vould best be acquired, since the two opposing elements may there be seen engaged in perpetual conflict. Paris is a training school for priests and martyrs, it is also a manufactory of anti-Christs and assassins. The future president of Ecuador gazed upon the good and the evil, and when he set out for his home afar, his choice was made.

As he developed intellectually, so he did spiritually. While a practicing Catholic from birth, Gabriel’s faith up to this point had been somewhat lukewarm. In Paris he began to attend Mass every day, as well as praying the Rosary daily, and confessing once a week; three practices which he continued up to the day of his death.

In 1858, García Moreno, girded by faith and emboldened by study, returned to Ecuador with the determination to establish a properly-ordered government. He founded a newspaper, La Union Naciónal, to aid in building a base of support before, in 1859, overthrowing the Liberal government and establishing a provisional government at Quito. A Liberal general, Guillermo Franco, quickly organized a rival administration in Guayaquil. With the threat of civil war looming, García Moreno offered to share power with Guillermo Franco, but the peace offering was rebuffed. The rival was pursued by García Moreno’s forces, and eventually fled to exile in Peru.

An elected convention confirmed García Moreno as President in January of 1861. He enacted a series of reforms, most importantly restoring the freedom of the Church, and agreed to a concordat with the Holy See which established the position of the Church in society, especially in the field of education and learning which García Moreno was eager to promote. Slavery was abolished, with compensation to slave-owners, prostitution was outlawed, and many other reforms took place but at the end of his term in August of 1865, he declined to run for another.

The Liberal oligarchs, however, were not so easily beaten. In early 1867 they deposed García Moreno’s successor, but in the National Convention of 1869 García Moreno was returned to power as interim ruler. It was during this convention that García Moreno organised a new constitution for Ecuador. While he was a monarchist who wished to bring a Spanish prince to sit on a new Ecuadorian throne, García Moreno was pragmatic above all and understood the Liberals would never live peaceably under a Catholic king. Seeking national unity and prosperity, it would have to be a republic, for now.

Confirmed as President by a popular election later in 1869, García Moreno again pursued ambitious reforms for the betterment of his nation and people. Eminent German Jesuits were invited to improve the study of physical sciences at the University of Quito. The National Polytechnic School and the Astronomical Observatory were founded. The National Penitentiary was instrumented to improve the miserable condition of prisoners. The School of Fine Arts was founded and a system of primary schools was set up around the country to educate both boys and girls. Hospitals, too, were set up around the country. Useless governmental positions which previous administrations had created for nepotistic purposes were abolished, and taxes were lowered. Eucalyptus trees were imported from Australia to grow in the Ecuadorian hinterland where the harvesting of grass by poor Indians had led to soil erosion.

Yet while Christian government was waxing in Ecuador, it was on the wane across the seas in Europe where the liberal nationalist Garibaldi had marched his Savoyard troops into Rome, seizing the Papal States from the Supreme Pontiff. Standing alone among the leaders of the world, García Moreno sent an official protest to the King of Italy for this offense against the Holy Father. Since the Pope was now somewhat impoverished by the loss of land, García Moreno organised a governmental tithe to help support the operations of the Holy See. Impressed by the devotion and loyalty of the Ecuadorian President, the Pope bestowed upon García Moreno the Order of Pius IX (First Class).

García Moreno knew that, while it had the support of the pious peasants and the landowners of the Conservative party, his closeness to the Faith only raised the ire of the Liberal Freemasons who were so passionately opposed to the Church. Again, his time of study and reflection in France came to the fore. In the 1600’s, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque was blessed with a number of visions of Our Lord, which led to the public devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus so widespread today. In a 1689, Our Lord appeared to St. Margaret Mary requesting the consecration of the nation of France to His Sacred Heart.

“The eternal Father,” St. Margaret Mary said, “wishing to repair the bitterness and agony which the Heart of Jesus endured in the palaces of earthly princes, wishes to make use of the reigning monarch of France to proclaim public devotion of reparation to that Sacred Heart.” Aside from the Consecration of France to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, this public devotion would involve the King erecting a shrine to the Sacred Heart. In return for these devotions, the King would have protection from his enemies.

Unfortunately the King of France in 1689 was Louis XIV, the notorious ‘Sun King’ of “l’etat, c’est moi” fame. The absolutist ignored the plea, and did not respond to Our Lord’s request, nor did his son, Louis XV. In 1789, exactly one hundred years later and with Our Lord’s request still unheeded by the Kings of France, the bloody French Revolution erupted, overthrowing the King and unleashing a brutal repression of the Church. In 1792, ejected from his gilded palace and imprisoned in a Parisian jail awaiting execution, King Louis XVI remembered Our Lord’s request and his own kinsmen’s foolish ignorance of their Heavenly Father. Shackled in a dark prison cell, the helpless and humbled monarch raised his eyes to heaven and consecrated the nation of France to the Sacred Heart. He was led to the scaffold and executed on January 21, 1793. (You can read his Last Will and Testament here).

[Incidentally, the second part of Our Lord’s promise, the building of a shrine to the Sacred Heart, obviously could not be completed by the beheaded monarch. It was left until 1870 after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War that a group of laymen petitioned the Archbishop of Paris to fulfill the obligation. The Shrine of the Sacred Heart – Sacré Coeur – was built atop Montmartre, and the Archbishop of Paris together with all the bishops of France gathered to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart of Jesus yet again.]

Inspired by this devotion, García Moreno decided to consecrate the Republic of Ecuador to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. On March 23, 1873, the President, Archbishop, high officials of Church and State, gathered in the Cathedral of Quito for the solemn ceremony. Before the Blessed Sacrament on the High Altar of the Cathedral, the President read out the Act of Consecration. The Archbishop then prayed:

Lord, this is Thy beloved Country.
Always, my Jesus, we will recognize Thee as our God.
May we never turn our eyes from this star of Love and Mercy
That glows in the midst of Thy breast
Which is the sanctuary of Thy Divinity and the tabernacle of Thy Heart.

And because we have consecrated and abandoned ourselves
Without reserve to Thy Divine Heart,
Multiply without end the years of our religious peace;
Banish impiety, corruption, misfortune and misery to the borders of our Mother country.
May thy Faith dictate our laws; May Thy justice govern our courts;
Maintain and direct our leaders with Thy mercy and strength;
Perfect our Priests with Thy wisdom, sanctity and fervor;
Convert all of the children of Ecuador with Thy Grace;
Crown them with Thy Glory in Eternity:
So that the whole world, when contemplating,
With holy envy, our true happiness and good fortune,
People and nations, as well, will take refuge and sleep soundly
In the calm of Peace in Thy loving Heart, which Thou dost offer to the world,
-That pure Fountain and perfect Symbol of Love and Charity. Amen.

With the completion of the Archbishop’s prayer, trumpets sounded in the Cathedral, artillery salutes were fired by the military, and church bells pealed throughout the entire country.

The Consecration infuriated the Liberales. The Quito police were informed that a plot had been hatched to assassinate the President. Indeed on two occasions the assassins had been foiled by García Moreno’s failure to appear where and when he was expected. Despite the pleas of the police, the President refused any increase of his security which would interfere in his normal schedule. In full knowledge of the danger he was in, he wrote to the Holy Father in Rome:

“What riches for me, Most Holy Father, to be hated and calumniated for my love for our Divine Redeemer! What happiness if your benediction should obtain for me from Heaven the grace of shedding my blood for Him, who being God, was willing to shed His blood for us upon the Cross!”

“The enemies of God and the Church can kill me,” he said on another occasion, “but God does not die.”

On August 6, 1875, President Gabriel García Moreno went to the Cathedral in Quito to adore the Blessed Sacrament as he did often. Leaving the Cathedral, his assassins sprang into action. Faustino Rayo, the leader of the band, suddenly attacked the President with a machete while his comrades opened fire with revolvers. Recalling his previous words, García Moreno shouted “Dios no muere” (‘God does not die’). Still concious, he was brought back into the Cathedral and was laid before the altar of Our Lady of Sorrows. There he received the Last Rites and finally expired.

On his person at the time of his death were found a relic of the Cross, a Scapular, and his copy of The Imitation of Christ, which he read from every day. His body lay in state for three days to accomodate the crowds of mourners wishing to pay their respects to their fallen leader. A draft was found of an upcoming address to Congress which was read out to that body a number of days after his funeral. In it, he proclaimed:

“If I have committed faults I beg your pardon a thousand and a thousand times, and this forgiveness I beg of all my countrymen with very sincere tears, begging them to believe that my desire has ever been for their good.. If on the contrary, you think I have succeeded in anything, attribute it in the first instance to Almighty God, and to the Immaculate Dispensatrice of the treasure of His Mercy, and then to yourselves, to the people, the army and to all those who in the various branches of government have helped me with so much intelligence and fidelity to fulfill my difficult duties.”

On hearing of the death of the great and holy man, Pope Pius IX ordered a solemn Requiem Mass to be celebrated at the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. In September of that year, in a public address, His Holiness expounded upon the glories of the Martyr-President:

“In the midst of all this, the Republic of Ecuador was miraculously distinguished by the spirit of justice and the unshakeable Faith of its President, who showed himself ever the submissive son of the Church, full of devotion for the Holy See, and of zeal to maintain religion and piety throughout his nation. And now the impious, in their blind fury, look, as an insult upon their pretended modern civilization, upon the existence of a Government, which, while consecrating itself to the material well-being of the people, strives at the same time to assure its moral and spiritual progress. Then, in the councils of darkness organized by the sects, these villains decreed the murder of the illustrious President. He fell under the steel of an assassin, as a victim to his Faith and Christian charity.”

In the twentieth century, the saintly Pope Pius XII reflected on García Moreno, calling him “a brilliant statesman, loyal son of the Church and Martyr of the Faith.”

Yet the complete hatred of the Liberals for Christ and His Church was not satiated by the blood of Gabriel García Moreno. Three years later, another gruesome assassination took place at the Cathedral of Quito. On March 30, 1877, Jose Ignacio Checa y Barba, the Archbishop of Quito, celebrated the solemn liturgy of Good Friday. Drinking from the Sacred Chalice, the Archbishop collapsed and soon fell dead. The holy vessel had been poisoned with a large amount of strychnine.

While the history of the Faith is laden with holy monarchs – we need only recall St. Louis of France, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Margaret of Scotland, or Blessed Charles of Austria – in the person of Gabriel García Moreno we can see that God does not forget to bestow many graces upon the people of the republics which today cover most of the world. Here was a man who would not absolve himself of the responsibilities he owed his country but instead confonted and fulfilled them, aided by the grace of God. The life of Gabriel García Moreno is a reminder that not only is Christian order possible, but it is needed, and the surest way of accomplishing it is by living lives of Christian charity ourselves.

Oh Holy Virgin of Lourdes, remember that thy servant Garcia Moreno promised to defend thy Immaculate Conception. Remember that he belonged to thy sweet Archconfraternity, and that he fervently prayed thy Holy Rosary. Pope Pius IX, who officially proclaimed thy exemption from original sin, declared that Garcia Moreno “died a victim of the Faith and Christian Charity for his beloved country”.

Oh Holy Virgin, obtain for us the canonization of this exemplary ruler so that powerful men arise in works and words for the cause of the same Faith and of our beloved country. Finally, please grant this special intention (make request), if it is for the good of my soul. Amen.

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