The Republican government, which came to power in Spain in 1931, was strongly anti-Catholic by secularising education, prohibiting religious education in schools, and expelling the Jesuits from the country. The Spanish Constitution of 1931 was marked by what Catholics considered a deprivation of their rights. By law, the Church's properties became the property of the state, and the Church had to pay rent and taxes to the state to continue its use of those properties. In the Pope's words: "Thus the Catholic Church is compelled to pay taxes on what was violently wrenched from her". The encyclical also denounced the fact that religious vestments, liturgical instruments, statues, pictures, vases, gems and similar objects necessary for worship were expropriated as well. It condemned the expropriation of all private Catholic schools from religious orders, which were to reopen them as secular schools.
