Ordination

By ecclesiastical law, the Order, each province, and each convent has its own juridical personality. When this is not recognized by the State, each must acquire a civil personality as determined by the province’s statute or the Order’s.

In the spirit of n. 552, the Order must have its own administrative statute, approved by the Master of the Order with his council.

A province must have, in accordance with its needs, and as part of its general statute, an administrative statute in which all matters pertaining to the administration of temporal goods are accurately determined. This statute must be included in the acts of the provincial chapter and should not be easily changed substantially save for a pressing reason.

When a convent is suppressed, its goods revert to the province, with due regard for legal obligations.

The Master of the Order and a prior provincial may each have a separate personal account for personal and discrete expenses.

In the section on economic administration the word ‘Order’ is taken to mean a juridical person under the immediate jurisdiction of the Master of the Order and comprising, as does a province, convents and institutes.

1. The excessive accumulation of possessions must not be permitted; and should a convent possess a really superfluous amount of immovable, movable or capital goods, the provincial chapter should dispose of them, having consulted the convent’s council and chapter.
2. Such possessions should be used to meet the needs of the province to which the convent belongs, or, having consulted the Master of the Order, should be offered to the Order or to a poorer province.

1. If, before a general chapter is held, a brother who has been elected diffinitor is elected or appointed prior provincial in his own or in another province or is impeded in any other way, the socius of the diffinitor shall be substituted in his place as of right.
2. If, however, the socius of a diffinitor or of a prior provincial is impeded or not available, in his place shall be substituted one of the diffinitors of the preceding provincial chapter, who has the conditions required in n. 522, beginning with the older in the Order.

Testimonial letters, signed by the president of the chapter and the diffinitors (see Appendix n. 30) shall be given to those elected as diffinitors of a general chapter and as socii; otherwise, in no way shall they be admitted to the position of diffinitor or to the election of the Master of the Order unless their right may be established in some other way.

All shall be elected, one after the other, by all the vocals at the chapter. In each election, if by the third ballot inclusively, no candidate has achieved an absolute majority, in the fourth and final ballot two are to be considered eligible, they being those who received the greater number of votes in the previous ballot Each election ends on the seventh ballot, in which case a relative majority is sufficient, without prejudice to n. 450, § III.