 Indeed, those countries in which liberalism became the dominant ideology in the late nineteenth century implemented secularizing reform laws that emancipated official institutions from control by the Catholic Church. Such reform laws created a civil registry, established civil matrimony and, in some cases, the possibility of divorce. Church property was often confiscated, convents and monasteries closed, and the Catholic Church’s legal immunities abolished. Central among such reforms was the secularization of official schooling, which became “laicist”. This process of secularization, along the lines suggested by Mora, took place comparatively early in Mexico (beginning in the 1850’s –after a failed attempt in the 1830’s) and Colombia (1850’s and 60’s). In both countries the process turned bitter and violent since the Church was powerful and was able to oppose resistance. The “laicist” State was consolidated in Mexico with the total defeat of the conservative pro-clerical adversaries, while in Colombia the secularizing reforms were almost fully reverted with the triumph of pro-clerical conservative “Regeneración” (1885–1904). During the 1870’s and 80’s similar processes of secularization took place in Venezuela and the Central American republics. Much less confrontational and violent were comparable changes in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay in the 1880’s, and in later years in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Perú (where religious freedom was established only in 1915). The process in Brazil was rather different since the monarchy had maintained control over the Church through the patronage system (priests received State salaries and the monarch appointed clerical authorities, among other measures). The establishment of the republic in the late 1880’s, strongly influenced by positivism, brought with it full religious freedom and the separation of Church and State. With the exception Colombia, the liberal forces of secularization won out during this period displacing the Catholic Church from its traditional participation in the ruling of society through official political institutions.