 However Ibáñez Martín spent most of the civil war out of the country as Franco had despatched him to Latin America with a mission to promote the Nationalist cause amongst the Spanish-speaking people there.Appointed as Minister of Education in succession to Pedro Sainz Rodríguez in 1939, a post he held until 1951, Ibáñez Martín oversaw the dismantling of the republican education system and its replacement with one based largely on the values and ideas of the Roman Catholic Church.Highly reactionary in his Catholicism, Ibáñez Martín was impressed by Josemaría Escrivá and as Minister of Education in the early 1940s he ensured that members of Opus Dei would no longer be hindered in the efforts to obtain teaching posts at universities, a move that helped the organisation grow considerably in power.