Iamdudum §1

¹ You are already, We think, well aware, Venerable Brethren, of the incredible series of excesses and crimes which has been enacted in Portugal for the oppression of the Church. For who does not know that, when the Republican form of Government was adopted in that country, there immediately began to be promulgated measures breathing the most implacable hatred of the Catholic religion? We have seen religious communities evicted from their homes, and most of them driven beyond the Portuguese frontiers. We have seen, arising out of an obstinate determination to secularize every civil organization and to leave no trace of religion in the acts of common life, the deletion of the feast days of the Church from the number of public festivals, the abolition of religious oaths, the hasty establishment of the law of divorce and religious instruction banished from the public schools. And then, to pass over in silence other enormities which would take too long to enumerate, the Bishops have been savagely attacked, and two of the most prominent of them, the Bishops of Oporto and Beia, men who are illustrious by the integrity of their lives and by their great services to their country and the Church, have been driven out of their sees and stripped of their honors.