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The competence of the institutions of the Roman Curia can be examined from a material point of view to evaluate the legitimacy and impact of the functions assigned to them by the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium of Pope Francis. The contribution focuses on the “external” limits of material competence, which involve the relationships between the Church and temporal realities as well as on the “internal” limits which derive from the need to safeguard specific ecclesial juridical assets (such as the unitas fidei and the rights of the faithful), proposing a remedy to encourage the revision of the norms in the synodal Church that define the attributions and prerogatives of the apical structures of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the decrees issued by the President of the Council of Ministers to combat and contain the spread of Covid-19, the Catholic Church in Italy worked with the civil authorities to ensure that gatherings in church settings would not increase the risk of infection. The purpose of this paper is to provide an in-depth analysis and assessment of the measures taken by ecclesiastical authorities – the Holy See, Italian Episcopal Conference, Regional Episcopal Conferences, Diocesan Bishops – within the intrinsically flexible framework of ius Ecclesiae, enabling solutions that would avoid gatherings while also ensuring full freedom to enact the salvific mission of the Church, which is expressed above all in the liturgy and the sacraments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines various aspects of a quaestio iuris of current pressing concern among canonists, regarding whether the major superiors of clerical religious institutes of pontifical right may set up autonomous pious foundations of a public or private canonical, legal nature. The purpose of this paper is to offer a solution to this matter, on the basis of the universal and particular laws in force, the general criteria that shape their interpretation and the practice of canon law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]