Three months later, elections were held in which Santa Anna won the presidency, although he would frequently hand executive duties to his vice president, Valentín Gómez Farías. After the election and the exile of Bustamante, Quintana Roo rejoined the Camera of Deputies. In the fall of 1833 he was named Minister of Justice where he worked to reduce the influence of the Catholic Church on politics. In October of that year he said, "Political discussions...must be entirely alien to the chair of the Holy Spirit and the character of a religion such as Christianity, whose fundamental basis is to dispense with governments."