Zagadnienie podmiotowości prawnej prebendy w świetle uregulowań kościelnych i państwowych
The issue of legal subjectivity of prebends in light of church and state regulations

Summary/Abstract: The article portrays the issue of the legal subjectivity of prebends, also called benefices, which were an important part of the church organization for centuries. In order to freely carry out their tasks, the Catholic Church conferred upon them legal personality, which was recognized in full by the contemporary state systems. However, together with the increasing secularization of Europe, the recognition of prebends as legal persons ceased to be automatic, and over time states completely stopped recognizing benefices as a subject of secular law. Nevertheless, they were still treated by the church as organizational units entitled to owning property. Although prebends are unheard of in contemporary times, many practical doubts still arise. The present study attempts to search for a solution to the problem of the right of ownership of benefices and delineates the complex evolution of the approach to this matter in Poland. This allows one to establish that real estate, the ownership of which was vested in prebends years ago, should be assigned to those legal subjects of the church with which the activities of a benefice were associated or those that actually used a prebend’s real estate after the cessation of a benefice’s activity.

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