HISTORIA I KOMPETENCJE PENITENCJARII APOSTOLSKIEJ
HISTORY AND COMPETENCES OF THE APOSTOLIC PENITENTIARY

Summary/Abstract: The article is composed of two parts. In the first part, a brief history of this tribunal, from its origins to its governing legislation, shall be presented. The increasing number of requests for absolutions, dispensations and indults, in the second half of the XII Century, constituted the seed from which would rise up a century later the bureaucratic office of the Penitentiary, presided over by a Cardinal Major Penitentiary and composed of various officials, at the beginning primarily clerks and advocates. In the second part, the most important legislatives acts regarding this dicastery shall be analysed: the Code of Canon Law of 1983, the Apostolic Constitution Pastor Bonus of 1988 and the Code of Canons of the Oriental Churches of 1990. On the basis of an analysis of the relevant juridical norms, the competences in force of the Apostolic Penitentiary shall be explained. There shall also be presented some practical considerations such as the procedures for making appeals to this Tribunal. In the conclusion it is noted that throughout its long history the Tribunal has had a considerable evolution of the competences assigned to it, for which it was preferred to reserve to the Apostolic Penitentiary only cases of the internal forum, such as questions of conscience and of indulgences. The Apostolic Penitentiary has also been called the “Tribunal of Mercy”.

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