Official (ecclesiastical)

The official or legal vicar is a Juge Ecclésiastique. Nowadays, he exerts his functions in the name of the bishop diocesan. He can be established for one or more dioceses.

The term of Officialité indicates the function or the court of the official.

According to the provisions of the canonical Code of right of 1983, it acts of a priest, doctor or laid off in canonical Droit, old of at least thirty years. It has the ordinary capacity to judge. Its judicial power is a deputy capacity of the bishop diocesan.

The most famous official in France is holy Yves, Yves Hélory de Kermartin , priest of the diocese of Tréguier to XIIIe century, canonized by the Catholic church in 1347.

History

The word officialis , “official”, comes obviously from officium , “office”, “service”. It thus has the general direction of civil servant or minister. At the 12th century, it received the direction of civil servant charged to return justice.

All those which in the Church had to judge, bishops, archdeacons, abbots, chapters, had to them official or agent. One indeed finds in the monasteries the officiales claustri . There are also the officiales currentes , with the image of the itinerant justiciarii , which return justice on various points of the diocese and the officiales AD excessus , specialized in the criminal cases.

The Concile of Thirty removed with the archdeacons, the seniors and the other authorities lower than the bishop the capacity to consider the matrimonial causes criminal and causes.

However, the term of official is more usually applied to the judge who represents the bishop.

Throughout all Old Mode, the character of Juge was recognized to him in France as well by the civil authority as by the ecclesiastical authority. This recognition was imposed by the official situation which enjoyed within the State the ecclesiastical institutions.

The official character of the official was increased more and more, as the State exerted a narrower control on ecclesiastical justices, in particular by the way of the call like abuse . The official was integrated into the legal hierarchy of the country, the provisions relating to it being as well in the civil laws as in the ecclesiastical laws. The edict of 1685 obliges the bishops to establish the officiaux ones in the places of their Diocèse which are in the spring of a Parliament other than that where the ordinary seat of their Officialité is established. They are the officiales foranei .

In France, the civil functions of the official were removed by the effect of the Loi of the August 16th and 24th 1790 which made disappear all the privileges from jurisdiction, in particular the privilege of the for. The Loi of the September 6th and 11th 1790 does not mention any more the officiaux ones among the titles and offices which she declares being preserved.

Nowadays, the official has to generally consider causes matrimonial. However, all the causes can be introduced near him, within the framework of the general right of the Catholic church. “It is up to faithful legitimately to assert the rights which they enjoy in the Church and to defend them in front of the qualified ecclesiastical for, according to the right. ” The officialities have thus sometimes to know dispute between two religious congregations, or laic and a congregation or a diocese. The case is rarer dispute between two laic which would not wish to carry their business in front of a civil court. The court could however be recognized qualified for such conflicts, while not having the capacity to exert a Coercition other than moral for the application of its judgment. It arrived, in a recent past, that certain judgments of ecclesiastical courts were considered by the civil courts, with the agreement of the parts, like a Conciliation.

Internal bonds

Officiality

Notes and refer

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