I am Sr Prudentia, Provincial Superior. Our Province has a farmland. I want to sell the land and use the money to build a formation house. Before obtaining the permission from the General and her team, as required by our constitution, I sought the vote of the council. Two councillors voted in favour of selling the land, and two of them voted against it. Can I sell the land?
It is a genuine doubt of many major superiors who wish to discharge their responsibility in the spirit of subsidiarity and collegiality. Canon 638 §3: “For the validity of alienation, and of any transaction by which the patrimonial condition off the juridical person could be adversely affected, there is required the written permission of the competent Superior, given with the consent of his council” (CCEO does not have a parallel canon).
To answer this doubt, some pertinent questions must be asked. First of all: Is the particular congregation of pontifical or diocesan right? If diocesan, the provincial needs the written consent of the bishop of the diocese in which the Generalate of the congregation is located (can. 638 §4 of CIC).
In addition to the norms prescribed in the Code of Canon Laws and of the norms of particular constitutions, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life advocates all religious congregations (whether diocesan or pontifical) to obtain the nihil obstat (no objection) from the diocesan bishop of the place. It is not a consent from the bishop, but rather a statement that he has no objection to the sale of the ecclesiastical property. It is not a norm, but a praxis of the said Congregation. It is to be noted that “the temporal goods of religious institutes are ecclesiastical goods …” (can. 635 §1 of CIC; can. 1009 §2 of CCEO). When an ecclesiastical property is being sold, there must always be a just cause for selling the property (can. 1293 §1 of CIC and can. 1035 §1 of CCEO). And if the property is valued more than the sum the Holy See has allowed for a particular country—it is Rupees ten crores in India—the sale of the property should be informed to the Holy See. Congregations of Latin rite must inform the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, while those of the Oriental Rites inform The Congregation for the Oriental Churches or the Patriarch with the consent of Permanent Synod: – can. 1292 §2 of CICI; can. 1036 of CCEO.
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Sr Divya Thattil
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