John III. had set two goals for his ambition: to return the Swedish church to Catholicism and to make his son Sigismund king of Poland. The latter he reached at the death of King Stephan in 1589, Sigismund succeeding him upon the throne. The former ambition John never attained, after years of stubborn and unreasonable perseverance giving up this pet idea. John made some attempts to bring order in the confused conditions of the church, but left it in a worse state of confusion than he found it. The crown and the aristocracy had deprived the church of nearly all its property and withheld its income from it. Archbishop Laurentius Petri complained of the miserable state of things, the ministers often being useless wretches and the service in some churches impossible to uphold for sheer lack of money. In 1572 the ecclesiastical matters were arranged at a meeting in Upsala, when a new church law was introduced, demanding higher qualifications for the ministers, who were to be elected by their congregations, and enforcing a school law. Laurentius Petri died in 1573 and was succeeded by Laurentius Petri Gothus. The new archbishop willingly subscribed to a set of rules, laid before him by the king, which reintroduced monasteries, worship of saints and the ceremonies of the Roman church. Jesuits were invited to the country, but met with little encouragement from the people. The very climax of John’s reactionary movements was formed by the introduction of his ritual, Liturgia, which was nothing else than an adaptation of the Catholic ritual. It was accepted by the Riksdag of 1577, but Charles refused to accept it for his duchy. The king had many conflicts with his brother, the latter always giving in to his wishes, except on this point. Ministers and university professors who refused to conform to the new ritual, or attacked it, were sheltered by the duke and, in many instances, given high offices. The king grew angry, but the duke remained firm and unyielding. When Queen Catherine died, in 1583, John’s Catholic fervor suffered a relapse, and ceased altogether after his marriage to young Protestant Gunilla Bielke, in the following year. He stubbornly stuck to his Liturgia for some time yet, but exiled the Jesuits, and dismissed with contumely ministers who had joined the Roman Church. During the last years of his reign, he said it was best to leave everybody a free choice in religious matters, regretting his Liturgia--which he once considered the gem of his own theological system--because it had caused so much trouble and confusion.