The Legal Personality of the Roman Catholic Church in Relation to the State

Abstract

In the introduction the author points out the fundamental principles of Church State relations as formulated at the Second Vatican Council. A specific mark of the healthy cooperation (sana cooperatio) that the Council recommends is the recognition by the state of the legal personality of the Church. The exposition consists of three points.

Point I characterizes the legal personality of the Church represented by the Holy See in the system of international public law.

Point II presents the legal personality of the Church at public law within the territory of a state, and the legal personality at civil law of the individual units of the Church in the internal legal system of that state. Special attention is paid to various models of legal personality that function in the law systems of contemporary states.

Point III discusses the problem of recognition of the legal personality of the Church by the Polish state between the two world wars and after World War II. In the pre-war period the highest state authority (the Diet) recognized the legal personality of the Church in all three above-mentioned respects. Since the Second World War, the question of the legal personality of the Church has not been fully settled. It has been the subject of bilateral talks between representatives of the government of the Polish People’s Republic and the Apostolic See conducted since 1974.