Contenuti per la categoria: Canon law

The ‘trial of the century’ in the Vatican and the violations of law

ABSTRACT: The clamor that has been caused by the sequence of events resulting in the judgement by the Vatican City State Tribunal of December 16, 2023 is well reflected in the name itself of ‘trial of the century’ that is commonly used by the international press in its regard: a sequence of events which has aroused serious doubts concerning a procedural development that was characterized by many gray areas, which, by casting themselves onto the tiny State beyond the Tiber, also affects a plurality of levels from a legal point of view. The essay (that was born as a pro veritate opinion) intends to address these critical issues and to investigate their extension: starting from what emerges from canon law (that is notoriously “the first normative source and the first interpretative reference criterion” of the Vatican legal system, but still has been the ‘great absent’ in this framework), according to which the principles of due process that here appear to be at least questioned are directly linked to divine natural law, up to the implications of the increasingly organic participation of the Vatican State in the international community, with the obligations that these dynamics inevitably imply. By comparing the problems of the trial in question with such parameters, the examination not only explores the depth of the above-mentioned deficiencies, but also highlights the risks that their consequences may entail for the existence itself of the Vatican ‘State- instrument’.

ABSTRACT: È già nella denominazione di ‘processo del secolo’, ormai comunemente impiegata dalla stampa, che si riflette il clamore sollevato dalla vicenda sfociata nella sentenza del Tribunale dello Stato della Città del Vaticano del 16 dicembre 2023: una vicenda che fin dagli esordi ha suscitato seri dubbi circa uno svolgimento processuale connotato da numerose zone d’ombra, le quali, proiettandosi sul minuscolo Stato d’Oltretevere, investono una molteplicità di piani dal punto di vista giuridico. È proprio a tali criticità che il presente contributo (nato come parere pro veritate) intende rivolgersi, indagandone l’estensione: a partire da quanto emerge dal diritto canonico (notoriamente ‘prima fonte normativa e primo criterio di riferimento interpretativo’ dell’ordinamento vaticano, eppure ‘grande assente’ in questa cornice), dove i principi del giusto processo che qui appaiono quantomeno messi in discussione si legano direttamente al diritto divino naturale, per arrivare fino ai risvolti dell’inserimento sempre più organico dello stesso Stato vaticano nella comunità internazionale, con gli obblighi che per esso da tali dinamiche inevitabilmente discendono. Ponendo a confronto le problematiche segnalate nel processo de quo con simili parametri, la disamina non solo scandaglia la profondità delle carenze lamentate, ma rileva i rischi che le loro conseguenze possono comportare per l’esistenza stessa dello Stato-mezzo vaticano.

SOMMARIO: PRIMO ESAME: L’ORDINAMENTO GIURIDICO VATICANO E IL DIRITTO CANONICO - 1. Un convitato di pietra dimenticato e maltrattato: l’‘ordinamento canonico’ come prima fonte normativa e primo criterio di riferimento interpretativo - 1.1. I principi del ‘giusto processo’ nell’economia giuridica vaticana. L’incidenza del diritto divino naturale e la convergenza con i sistemi sovranazionali di tutela dei diritti - 1.2. Il processo penale vaticano alla prova dei fatti. Anomalie e criticità scaturite dai quattro Rescripta ex audientia Sanctissimi di papa Francesco - 1.2.1. Considerazioni su legalità processuale, ius defensionis e principio di eguaglianza - 1.2.2. I Rescripta quali atti giuridici del romano pontefice. Implicazioni del principio Prima Sedes a nemine iudicatur nel diritto vaticano - 1.3. La giusta comprensione del primato del successore di Pietro nell’ordinamento canonico e nell’ordinamento statuale. L’implosione dello Stato della Città del Vaticano - SECONDO ESAME: L’ORDINAMENTO GIURIDICO VATICANO, L’ITALIA, L’UNIONE EUROPEA E LA COMUNITÀ INTERNAZIONALE - 2. Parallelamente al processo: la stipulazione della Convenzione monetaria e le sue conseguenze per lo Stato della Città del Vaticano - 2.1. La fine dell’isolamento dello Stato del papa - 2.2. La firma della Convenzione monetaria e lo Stato della Città del Vaticano quale Stato di diritto: un processo alla sbarra tra Comitato misto e Corte di giustizia europea - 2.3. Profili strutturali dell’ordinamento giudiziario vaticano e principi del giusto processo. Uno sguardo critico sulle recenti riforme e sul loro impatto nei procedimenti penali pendenti - 2.3.1. L’indipendenza della magistratura e il principio di precostituzione (o di immutabilità) del giudice - 2.3.2. Nomine pontificie e sostenibilità del sistema giudiziario: tra esigenze di giustizia e ragioni di opportunità - 3. Nell’immediato post-processo. La giustizia vaticana sotto la lente, mediata ma invasiva, della Corte europea dei diritti dell’uomo - 3.1. Il vaglio della sentenza in Italia - 3.2. Il vaglio davanti alla Corte europea dei diritti dell’uomo - 3.3. Dal vaglio del processo de quo a quello generale della giustizia vaticana - 4. In un futuro molto prossimo. Le ripercussioni sul piano della credibilità internazionale della Santa Sede: la fine dell’affidabilità del foro vaticano in relazione ai contratti; i controlli in materia economico-finanziaria - 4.1. Il giudizio di affidabilità del foro vaticano e la sua possibile compromissione - 4.2. Contrattazione pubblica nello Stato del papa e clausola del foro vaticano: una crisi annunciata - 4.3. Le potenziali implicazioni sulla vigilanza in materia economico-finanziaria: tra la supervisione di Moneyval e le norme europee antiriciclaggio.

“New wine into new wineskins”: some first notes on the current challenges for canon law 

ABSTRACT: Inspired by the Summary Document of the recent Synod of Bishops, which requests a revision of the Code of Canon Law and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, this study intends to reflect on the contribution that canonical doctrine can offer for this revision. Specifically, the study analyzes the current Code as a result of both the Second Vatican Council and the legal classifications specific to the positivist culture during the 19th and 20th centuries and, consequently, it observes the necessity, from a de iure condendo perspective, to approach the work articulated towards a mature acceptance of certain aspects of the Second Vatican Council not appropriately valued in the drafting of the Code, such as the pneumatological renewal of the theology and ecclesiology of communion. Given these remarks, it is possible to move in the direction indicated by the Synod, avoiding "pouring the new wine of the Synod into old wineskins" of the now outdated juridical categories. In this perspective, the study identifies four potential areas for renewal, both urgent and achievable.

SOMMARIO: 1. Premessa - 2. Una pro-vocazione alla canonistica - 3. Un complesso lavoro di ricezione - 4. Alcune questioni sulle quali riflettere - 5. Considerazioni di sintesi.

The Church "is" communio fidelium and "has" communio hierarchica: foundation and consequences from a canonic constitutional approach 

ABSTRACT. Ecclesiology has undergone an important development since the Second Vatican Council: it has moved from an institutional ecclesiology to an ecclesiology of communio. Canonical science seeks to adapt to this reality. But in some approaches, communio fidelium and communio hierarchica are still considered on the same plane; in practice, communio fidelium would become a “product” or a “result” of communio hierarchica. But this introduces a “harmful separation between theory and practice” (cf. Veritatis gaudium, n. 4). In this paper I will explain, from a constitutional canonical approach more in line with the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, the foundations and consequences of the instrumentality of the communio hierarchica in relation to the communio fidelium, and what it means that the ‘institutional principle’ is born of the ‘communitarian principle’ (Hervada).

SOMMARIO: 1. Planteamiento - 2. Iglesia-Misterio, Iglesia-Comunidad y Iglesia-Sociedad - 3. El protagonismo de la communio hierarchica antes del Concilio Vaticano II - 4. Modos de relacionar la communio fidelium y la communio hierarchica - 5. La Iglesia “es” communio fidelium y “tiene” communio hierarchica - 6. El principio institucional nace del principio comunitario - 7. La autoridad nace de la comunidad - 8. La forma de gobierno eclesial procede de una norma divina positiva - 9. Conclusión: algunas consecuencias canónicas.

About a recent formal Note of the Holy See on the legal doctrine of 'discovery'. Towards a revirement of the traditional orientation? 

ABSTRACT: This article intends to conduct an brief analysis on the significance of some recent pronouncements of the Catholic Church that question the foundations of the traditional doctrine of discovery, which has been forged by the colonial powers since the sixteenth century and has found particular expression in the nineteenth-century legislation and jurisprudence of the courts of several countries, including the United States and Canada.

SOMMARIO: 1. Gli esordi del colonialismo nel ‘Nuovo Mondo’ e il ruolo della Chiesa cattolica - 2. Presupposti teorici e ricadute della doctrine of discovery sulla giurisprudenza circa gli American Indians. Il sistema canadese delle Residential Schools - 3. La Nota formale a cura del Dicastero per la Cultura e l’Educazione e per il Servizio dello Sviluppo Umano Integrale del 30 marzo 2023 – 4. Prime reazioni delle Conferenze episcopali della regione a margine del pronunciamento curiale - 5. Aspetti internazionali del problema e rilievi conclusivi

For a critical analysis of the war experience in the Western civilisation (from war-duels to the “blind” ban on so called aggression) 

ABSTRACT: In taking up the threads of a meditation recently begun in this Journal, the Author manages to update its profile within an increasingly decisive criticism of the Briand-Kellogg pact: unnatural resolution of the dialectic between national interests in a pure et simple of so-called aggression of one state by another. The criticism moves in particular from the nature, no less brutally political than the war itself, of the UN decision to ban the alleged aggressor, without any analysys whatsoeverof the underlying reasons that constituted the basis for it, in the presence of a shared judging body and impartiality, capable too of suggesting possible conciliatory measures also with regard to the damage already caused by the war. The essay concludes by deriving the need to overcome the noted backwordness of the UN Charter on this point, channeling it into the context of a culture of “mild law”, inclined to wards the gradual overcoming of the “sovereign state” model, in the context of the recent development of nonimperial federal forms of coexistence and non- violent collaboration between nations.

SOMMARIO: 1. Una premessa - 2. Sull’uso della forza nella rivoluzione oceanica - 3. Tra legittimismo ottocentesco e rivolta delle nazioni - 4. Sulle note di anarchia dei rapporti internazionali fra le due guerre mondiali - 5. (segue). ... e sulla fondamentale questione dell’impotenza giudicante dell’ONU - 6. Conflitto e aggressione nell’anarchia succeduta alla Santa Alleanza - 7. (segue) ... contro l’autodichia esasperata delle potenze egemoni - 8. Itinerari alternativi (non bellici) alla decisione di guerra -9. (segue) ... in tema di costituzioni europee e di coercizione nei trattati “di pace” - 10. Verso orizzonti nuovi in materia di riformismo costituzionale?

De Albanensium seu Græcorum peculiari cura habenda. The religious condition of the Italo-Albanians in Calabria during the post-Tridentine age. Historical and legal outlines

Abstract: The invasion of Albania by the Turks in 1478 forced many Albanians to emigrate in the Kingdom of Naples and, in particular, in the Calabrian provinces. These Albanian refugees continued to speak their language and most of all to profess the Catholic religion, but according to the Byzantine rite. The liturgical and doctrinal diversity of this rite led, over the years, Calabrian bishops and priests following the Roman rite to be wary and suspicious towards these canonical practices. Nevertheless, the Holy See was generally benevolent towards the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church allowing the devotes the free exercise of religious practice, protecting diversity and encouraging the education of clerics, by enacting a series of important measures over the Centuries. This paper aims to focus, from a legal-historical perspective, the events concerning the Byzantine rite in Calabria between the 16^th and the 18^th Centuries, through the analysis of the decrees of some diocesan synods and some of the most important papal measures that allowed the Albanians of Calabria (arbëreshë) to resist the attempts of “Latinization” and at the same time to confirm, despite the diversity, their belonging to the Catholic Church. 

SOMMARIO: 1. Una premessa - 2. Gli albanesi di rito greco nella Calabria post-tridentina fra sospetti di eterodossia e tentativi di latinizzazione: le disposizioni di alcuni sinodi diocesani - 3. I Pontefici di fronte alla ‘questione’ degli italo-albanesi: dal XVI Secolo alla fondazione del Collegio Corsini.

The art treasures of the Vatican in the Lateran Treaty

ABSTRACT: Drawing inspiration from a recent initiative by the Pontiff, the contribution focuses on the peculiar juridical condition of the art treasures kept in the Vatican City, resulting from a series of provisions of the Lateran Treaty, other international conventions and recent Vatican legislation on the protection of cultural heritage. The result is a complex and articulated regulatory framework that underlines the role of the Holy See as a custodian and guarantor of one of the greatest historical and artistic heritages of humanity.

Sommario - 1. Un gesto ecumenico di papa Francesco - 2. L’art. 18 del Trattato lateranense - 3. L’articolato quadro normativo attuale - 4. Suggestioni e questioni emergenti - 5. I tesori d’arte del Vaticano e la loro peculiare condizione giuridica - 6. Osservazioni conclusive.

ABSTRACT: The article analyzes the recent Latvian Law by which the State unilaterally declares the autocephaly of the Latvian Orthodox Church. The latter was previously under the Patriarchate of Moscow and all Russias. In addition, the study illustrates the changes made to the Law of Latvia, on the legal status of this Church. Much emphasis is put on the violation of the principle of separation, enshrined in art. 99 of the Latvian Constitution, further addressing the tendency to change the ecclesiastical policy of the European Union as a result of the war in Ukraine.

SUMMARY: 1. The State proclaims by law the autocephaly of the Latvian Orthodox Church - 2. Birth and development of the Latvian Orthodox Church - 3. The Religious Freedom Law and its amendments - 4. The Law on the Latvian Orthodox Church and the amendments made by the Saeima in 2019-2022 - 5. State legislative intervention, separatism and the Constitution - 6. Separatism, secularism and neo-jurisdictionalism in the European Union.

A leading guide for the new generations of Ecclesiastical and Canon Law scholars, the ones who got questions instead of offering answers

ABDTRACT: These brief notes just pretend to suggest some issues concerning a deepened anthology of essays written by an influential scholar, presented and collected by his colleagues of different approaches and generations. It definitely means to underline peculiar and still not completely explored issues in both Ecclesiastical and Canon Law: the liberty of conscience and the importance of religious freedom in defending fundamental human rights, the scientific purpose to investigate and analyse the still ongoing relevance of a renewed "Church" for a changing world. Rinaldo Bertolino's thoughts seem in this sense a gift to the youngest scholars, encouraging them to have more questions than answers.

Riflessioni sul “giusto processo” in diritto canonico, sullo sfondo del riequilibrio in corso fra diritti e poteri nella Chiesa cattolica *

Reflections on due process in canon law, against the background of the ongoing rebalancing of rights and powers in the Catholic Church *

SOMMARIO: 1. Tra ‘agàpe’ e storia. Una premessa neotestamentaria - 2. (segue) Potere giudiziario e sovranità binaria. Il diritto divino dei vescovi - 3. “Heri dicebamus”? Sul tentativo curiale di ridurre il Vaticano II a mero evento culturale - 4. Origini e sviluppo dell’opposizione anticonciliare: il terreno del processo - 5. La prima controriforma vaticana: la “Nova agendi ratio in doctrinarum examine” - 6. Resilienze (non sopprimibili) di una costituzione materiale parallela? - 7. Persistenze storico-culturali di fatti compiuti prevaricanti e diritto di resistenza - 8. (segue): a) Su un “golpe Gasparri” in danno di due diversi progetti di giustizia amministrativa - 9. b) … e sulla “falsa” giustizia amministrativa del card. Grocholewski (e suoi) - 10. c) Lo sconcerto della scoperta nel clero di pratiche corruttive su minori - 11. (segue) … e l’abnorme deriva inquisitoria dei processi de delictis gravioribus - 12. Sulla voluta inattuazione dei tribunali amministrativi interdiocesani - 13. Sulle odierne, inedite sperimentazioni in tema di contenzioso matrimoniale - 14. Tra rescritti di giustizia e giurisdizione inter partes: un sottaciuto tema fondamentale - 15. Dalla frammentazione (relitto amaro di incertezze strategiche) a un ritorno al Lateranense IV?

ABSTRACT: The essay notes a continuity, starting with the Tridentine, in the deviation from the fundamental principles of what we today call 'due process', imposed by Innocent III since the Council Lateran IV. The progressive spread of special jurisdictions seemed to express the degradation of certain principles and values of medieval common law, from which canon law was gradually moving away. The 1917 code is to be seen as the final sanction and ratification of that involutional process. The author then examines the 1983 reform, which moved between reforming timidity and curial overbearingness: the special jurisdictions were untouchable; the planned chapter on administrative tribunals was deleted in extremis. The impression is that no serious follow-up has been given to the reforms ordered by Paul VI in fulfilment of the Council mandate, starting with the Doctrinal Dicastery. In fact, the centralist innovation as codified in 1917 substantially persists. It is to this petrified block, rebuilt under the two pontificates following Pope Montini, that Pope Francis I attempts to react with innovative ideas that however appear technically imprecise, and in many ways inadequate to the actual dimensions of the Holy See's overall non-fulfilment of the conciliar mandate. Against the backdrop of these perhaps promising innovative signs, Pope Francis appears on the other hand invariably opposed by the Curia, both in the field of substantive and procedural law.