Your right...I was mistaken. Maximillian did give some property and some Bishops back...was I thinking Napoleon?
Benito Juarez died in the early 1870's, but he did persecute the Catholic Church.
Yes, it was Benito Juarez. The catholic church owned nearly half of the land in Mexico on which they did NOT pay taxes. Juarez told them they could only have the land on which the church building sat. So, they built a lot of little cathedrals in cities and retained ownership of SOME valuable property. However, they lost a lot of the rural property. No, he did not persecute the catholic church, he did what needed to be done to help Mexico.