Dilectissima Nobis §15

¹⁵ Even Religious Congregations are now stricken in an inhuman manner by these deplorable laws. The unjust suspicion was fomented that they might exercise political activity dangerous to the safety of the State, thus stimulating a passion hostile to them with every kind of denunciation and persecution to provide an open and easy way to arrive at more serious measures. They were subjected to many inquiries, registrations and inspections which constituted troublesome forms of fiscal oppression and finally, after they were deprived of the right of teaching and exercising any other activity from which they could obtain honest sustenance, they were placed under tributary laws, though it was well-known that, deprived of everything, they will not be able to pay taxes, which is another veiled manner of rendering their existence impossible. Actually, with such legislation, not only the Religious but the whole Spanish people have been stricken, because there have been rendered impossible those great works of charity and of beneficence for the aid of the poor which always formed the magnificent glory of the Religious Congregations and the Catholic Spain.