Kwestia utrzymania kapelana migrantów

Abstract

A migrant chaplain who arrives and works in a diocese, keeps his right to be maintained, but the question is which congregation, and especially which of the Church superiors is obliged to maintain him. The way of answering this question has been undergoing a gradual evolution. The old legislation recognized by the Council of Trent admitted the principle of a close connection of the obligation to maintain the chaplain and the incardination. According to this principle, the chaplain’s own bishop should endeavour after his maintenance, and the bishop of the diocese in which the chaplain worked only had a moral obligation – based on the natural law – to reward him. The special legislation concerning chaplains going to work overseas which was developing since the end of the 19th century was gradually introducing one more principle, according to which the duty to maintain migrant chaplains was also decided by the actual service in a foreign diocese. The legal basis of maintenance resulting from the relation of actual service, now called aggregation (addictio) in a foreign diocese was accepted, at least implicitly, in the Apostolic Constitution Exsul Familia. The Second Vatican Council and the post-Council legislation (e.g. Ecclesiae Sanctaę) introduced a new principle in this field, according to which the decision about the obligation to maintain the chaplain depended on serving the given local Church. Both the chaplains incardinated to the given Church and foreign ones can serve it, especially if they are aggregated to it, as the case is with migrant chaplains. Basing on this principle the special legislation concerning the migrant pastorate (instr. De pastorali migratorum cura, No. 43) explicitly makes migrant chaplains equal with other priests in the diocese where they work, as far as maintenance is concerned. It also orders securing all the chaplain’s rights in his own diocese it he returns to it.