Pope Leo XIV, during the audience granted to the Cardinal Secretary of State on March 25, 2026, considering that Pope Francis had already expressed himself favorably in this regard, granted the dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life the faculty to authorize the competent diocesan bishop to issue the decree of dismissal provided for in can. 699 § 2 of the Code of Canon Law, in the case where the professed to be dismissed would be the major superior of the monastery.
The Holy Father also ordered that the present rescript be published in L’Osservatore Romano and then in the official collection Acta Apostolicae Sedis, with immediate effect.
To understand what this entails, it is necessary to recall that Can. 699 - § 2 stipulates that ‘in the autonomous monasteries referred to in can. 615, it is the major superior, with the agreement of his council, who decrees the dismissal.’ This canon itself had been the subject of a major reform by Pope Francis on February 11, 2022, through the motu proprio Competentias quasdam decernere, an apostolic letter by which certain norms of the Code of Canon Law and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches were modified. In its article 7, Competentias quasdam decernere advocated modifications concerning the decree of dismissal of professed religious in monasteries of their own right. The present rescript thus specifies the case where the professed to be dismissed would be the major superior of the monastery. In this case, the issuance of the decree of dismissal falls to the competent diocesan bishop.
Janvier Yameogo - Radio Vatican
