CHAPELLANCY. — Chapellancy consists in the obligation to provide for certain functions or acts of worship and in the corresponding right to receive the economic remuneration established by the founder. The obligation almost always pertains to the celebration of Masses in a particular church or at a particular altar and entails that the holder must fulfill it personally or through others, according to the nature of the chapellancy. The remuneration may be secured either by the establishment of an endowment, whose income goes to the chaplain, or by the imposition of a rent or fee to be paid by private or corporate persons who have received goods for this purpose. Often, the term chapellancy is understood to mean the autonomous and perpetual mass of goods destined to compensate for the burden of sacred functions (T. Mauro, *La personalità giuridica degli enti ecclesiastici*, Vatican City 1945, p. 190), just as before the *Codex Iuris Canonici* the mass of goods or rights constituting its endowment was called a *beneficium*.
Chapellancy is termed *laical* if, in its establishment, the authoritative intervention of the ecclesiastical superior with the faculty to create the juridical entity is lacking, or if it has not been assigned to a moral ecclesiastical person (C. Berardi, *Commentaria in ius ecclesiasticum universum*, I, Milan 1846, n. 42); it is instead termed *ecclesiastical* if it is erected by ecclesiastical authority or belongs to a moral ecclesiastical person: in this latter case, its ecclesiastical character derives from the nature of the goods which have become *eccellenti* [i.e., ecclesiastical]. A laical chapellancy may be founded by anyone with the faculty to dispose of their own goods, and this may be done either by an inter vivos act or by an act mortis causa; the goods securing the remuneration for the holder do not become ecclesiastical goods, however, and since multiple wills are involved, the Ordinary has the right of oversight (CIC, can. 1515, §1). The holder, whose appointment is freely regulated by the founder, may be a cleric or a layperson, a man or a woman. Civilly, it may take the form of a legacy, a foundation for the soul, or an autonomous entity (v. GIUDICE, *Corso di diritto ecclesiastico*, Milan 1939, pp. 113-14). An ecclesiastical chapellancy, if erected as a juridical entity by the competent ecclesiastical authority, is a true and proper *beneficium*, and as such is subject to all canonical prescriptions concerning *beneficia* (CIC, can. 1412, n. 2°).
In Italy, the law of 15 August 1867, no. 3348, suppressed all ecclesiastical and laical chapellancies; the Civil Code of 1865 (arts. 833 and 1075) prohibited the establishment of laical chapellancies; these provisions must be considered abrogated by art. 29 of the Concordat of 1929.