[1] He later left the Church and became known as a provocative speaker against Catholicism, touring Europe and the United States.

Leaving his own country after the capture of Rome by the French, he carried on a vigorous campaign against priests and Jesuits in England, Scotland and North America, partly by means of a periodical, the Gavazzi Free Word.

In 1870 he became head of the Free Church (Chiesa libera) of Italy, united the scattered Congregations into the Unione delle Chiese libere in Italia, and in 1875 founded in Rome the theological college of the Free Church, in which he himself taught dogmatics, apologetics and polemics.

[1] Among his publications are No Union with Rome (1871); The Priest in Absolution (1877); My Recollections of the Last Four Popes, etc., in answer to Cardinal Wiseman (1858); Orations, 2 decades (1851).

His lectures at Quebec and Montreal were strongly anti-Catholic; and at both places the soldiers had to be called out to restore order.