President of Ecuador
Gabriel Garcia Moreno Biography

When Fr Kimball produced this beautifully bound and illustrated book, he did much more than present a biography about the President of Ecuador, Gabriel Garcia Moreno (1821-1875) or a mere history of his tenure of office. He has offered us something more precious: an insight into the past in order to illuminate the present. For the historical events surrounding the life of Garcia Moreno were foretold by Our Lady in the 1600s when she appeared to a Spanish nun, Mother Mariana of Jesus Torres of the Order of the Immaculate Conception in Quito, and spoke of “a truly Catholic President” who would consecrate Ecuador to the Sacred Heart and die as a martyr. Not only are these apparitions declared to be authentic by Bishop Salvador de Ribera of Quito when he formally instituted the official devotion in 1611 and therefore worthy of belief, but Pope Pius IX declared that Gabriel Garcia Moreno “died a victim of the Faith and Christian Charity for his beloved country.”

The book chronicles these events in great detail with authentic contemporary evidence collected by Fr Berthe who lays bare the plot to kill Garcia Moreno: he was assassinated to assuage the vengeful blood lust of local Freemasonic groups who had been continually thwarted by his restoration of Catholic social order in Ecuador. 

The book is devoted to the remarkable achievements of Garcia Moreno who inherited a country ravaged by revolution, anarchy and corruption. Within the years of his presidency, he reconstructed it along Catholic lines. Almost the first presidential act he performed was to sign a concordat with the Holy See to protect the Church’s privileges in society. This was followed by a new Constitution which made Catholicism the official religion of the State. 

That is precisely what the Social Kingship of Christ entails, that Christ and the laws of the Church be officially recognized by a nation. We can contrast this situation with the present pluralistic, religiously indifferent society deliberately brought about by the Religious Liberty policy of Vatican II. The result is that today not one nation in the world upholds the Catholic Church officially, which has left the Church with no more status or authority in the public life of any country than other religions or atheism.

Garcia Moreno refused to give freedom to evil and to those who wished to attack the Church. He rejected the liberal ideas of the Freemasons who were seeking a complete separation of Church and State, and dedicated Ecuador to the Sacred Heart of Jesus by a government act in 1873. This illustrates the defining feature of his regime: the union of Church and State to guarantee the spiritual and material well being of the people. 

In the secular sphere, Gabriel Garcia Moreno set Ecuador on the road to prosperity after decades of revolution and corruption that had bankrupted the country. He reduced taxes and established the Mortgage Credit Bank and several Savings Banks to enable commerce and industry to flourish. He developed roads and railways, founded new schools and universities, encouraged scientific research, improved prison conditions and reformed the judiciary and military.

As a result of his policies, not only was corruption reduced and morals and good customs restored, but property was secure, the nation prospered and social conditions improved. The remarkable thing is that all this was achieved without compromising with the Revolution. That is why Pope Leo XIII hailed Garcia Moreno’s country as “the model of a Christian state.”

But Fr Berthe’s account, excellent though it undoubtedly is, would be incomplete without the other half of Our Lady’s prophesy issued at the same time to Mother Mariana de Torres which effectively links the 19th-century Catholic Statesman of Ecuador to the coming of a “Prelate” during the 20th century to complement his work. As Fr Kimball points out: 

“Our Lady prophesied for the twentieth century, saying explicitly that during the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth century, errors would become more and more widespread in Holy Church, placing the Church in a catastrophic situation. Morals would become corrupt and the Faith would disappear.” 

This has obviously come to pass as we see that ever since Vatican II the Holy Catholic Church has been afflicted by a crisis of world proportion, heresies abound, the priesthood is wracked by abuses, the light of the Faith is almost extinguished and morals are widely corrupted among Catholics. A Prelate in the 20th century who had the foresight and courage to publicly oppose this wave of apostasy and impiety was Archbishop Lefebvre (1905-1991), Founder of the Society of St Pius X. 

In his commentary, Fr Kimball brings convincing evidence to establish a close parallel between the fate of Gabriel Garcia Moreno and Archbishop Lefebvre. Both suffered at the hands of Freemasonry, the former shedding his blood for the Faith, the latter undergoing a dry martyrdom through unmerited persecution, ostracism and eventually excommunication. 

Fr Kimball explains:

“Likewise in 1978 Archbishop Lefebvre foresaw who would be the motivators of his    excommunication ten years later: "If one day they shall excommunicate us because we remain faithful to these theses we shall consider ourselves excommunicated by Freemasonry. Our consolation will be that we remain in the company of God and of all the martyrs who have given their lives to keep the Faith…

Just as Archbishop Lefebvre drew wrath from the fifth column of Freemasonry within the Church by consecrating four bishops in 1988 as the necessary means of passing down the Catholic priesthood to future generations, so García Moreno had especially angered the Masons by his exemplary Concordat of 1862.”

In making this Biography of Gabriel Garcia Moreno easily available to Catholics today, Fr Kimball has performed a double tour de force: he has kept alive the memory of two outstanding Catholic figures who stood against the Church’s enemies and suffered tragic consequences for their pains. It is a task of monumental importance, for the objective of the 19th-century Freemasons has now been achieved – the subversion of the Catholic Church through the adoption of Masonic principles such as equality of religions, the secular state, the destruction of the sacred liturgy and other compromises with worldly values. Both Garcia Moreno and Archbishop Lefebvre regarded these trends with absolute horror and did battle against them. That is why they suffered at the hands of the Church’s enemies. Yet in spite of all this, Freemasonic principles won adherents among the Catholic hierarchy during Vatican II and Liberalism has gained the ascendancy throughout the entire Church. The rest, as they say, is history.

The general public, not just Catholics, needs to have access to this Biography of Gabriel Garcia Moreno so as to see the underlying reasons for the ills of modern society. They may then be persuaded to look in the right direction for solutions to seemingly insoluble problems and recognise that true peace can only be achieved with the Kingship of Christ. Fr Kimball certainly deserves credit for his wisdom in publishing historical truths which are an inspiration and prophetic sign for our times.

Dr. Carol Byrne