Pope Francis in the Apostolic Letter in the form of Motu Proprio “The native law”
Everyone assets, movable and immovable, including liquid assets and securities, which have been or will be acquired, in any manner whatsoever, by the Curial Institutions and Entities connected to the Holy See, sThey are ecclesiastical public goods and as such owned‘, in ownership or other real right, of the Holy See as a whole and therefore belonging, independently of the civil power, to its unitary, indivisible and sovereign patrimony. It is what it establishes Pope Francis in the Apostolic Letter in the form of Motu Proprio “The native law” on the patrimony of the Apostolic See, signed on 20 February but published today, in which, referring to canons 1254 and 1255 of Canon Law, he clarifies the public ecclesiastical nature of the goods acquired by the curial institutions and entities connected to the Holy See.
Therefore, no Institution or Body can – the Motu Proprio further establishes – claim his private and exclusive ownership or title to the goods of the Holy See, having always acted and always having to act in the name, on behalf and for the purposes of this as a whole, understood as a unitary moral person, only representing it where required and permitted by civil law. The assets are entrusted to the Institutions and Bodies so that, as public administrators and non-owners, they make the use of them envisaged by current legislation, in compliance with and with the limit given by the competences and institutional purposes of each, always for the good community of the Church. The provisions of current legislation regarding the assets and investments of entities that refer to the Holy See included in the list referred to in the Statute of the Council for the Economy remain unchanged.
The innate right of the Holy See, independent of civil power, to acquire temporal goods is one of the instruments which, with the support of the faithful, prudent administration and appropriate controls, ensure the Apostolic See’s ability to operate in history, in time and in the space, for the purposes proper to the Church and with the independence which is necessary for the fulfillment of her mission, is explained in the papal document. The universal destination of the goods of the Holy See gives them an ecclesiastical public nature.
The entities of the Holy See acquire and use them, not for themselves, like the private owner, but, in the name and in the authority of the Roman Pontiff, for the pursuit of their institutional aims, equally public, and therefore for the common good and at the service of the universal Church. In practice, bodies and institutions to which such goods have been registered must look after them with the prudence that the management of the common thing requires and according to the rules and competences that the Holy See has recently given itself with the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium and, even earlier, with the “long journey” of economic and administrative reforms.
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