Gabriel Garcia Moreno was born in 1821, the son of Gabriel García-Yangüas y Gómez de Tama, a Spanish nobleman, and María de las Mercedes Moreno y Morán de Butrón, a member of a wealthy aristocratic criollo family, descended from the first Conquerors and Spanish nobility arrived to South America, in Ecuador's main port, Guayaquil. Garcia y Gomez de Tama, his father, initially had invested in the shipping industry of the Viceroyalty of Peru (then a Spanish colony encompassing what is now Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia) who moved to the New World in order to see his investment yield results. He died, however, when Garcia Moreno was a boy, leading his upbringing to his devoutly Catholic mother. This rearing instilled in the young Garcia Moreno a devout sense of Catholic piety which would influence his later political activity as well as his private life. Garcia Moreno studied theology and law in the University of Quito. Thinking he had a vocation to the priesthood, he received minor orders and the tonsure; but his closest friends and his own interests convinced him to pursue a secular career. Graduating in 1844, he was admitted to the bar. Starting his career as both lawyer and journalist (opposed to the Liberal government in power) he made little headway. In 1849, he embarked on a two-year visit to Europe to see first hand the effects of the 1848 revolution.