MILITARY CHAPLAIN. - I. GENERALITIES. - For the notion of the military chaplain, it is useful to refer back to the notion of the personal parish priest. Canon law indeed determines the spiritual jurisdiction of the parish priest over the faithful not only in relation to the territory in which the faithful have their domicile or residence, but also (albeit exceptionally) in relation to the quality of the persons, according as they belong to a particular family, to a particular order, to a particular class, or finally with the concurrence of both criteria, the local and the personal (cf. also CIC, can. 216 § 4).
The military chaplain can therefore be defined as a parish priest (parochus militum, missionarius exercitus is what he is often called in the texts), whose spiritual jurisdiction over the faithful is established by their belonging to a well-defined class: the military.
But the jurisdiction of the military chaplain is not always limited to persons properly belonging to the military (soldiers, non-commissioned officers, officers of any armed force of the State): it sometimes extends to the personnel so-called assimilated to military personnel and even to the families of the military themselves; cf., for example, the decree of the Sacred Congregation Consistorial of 8 Dec. 1939 (AAS, 31 [1939], p. 710, and the Concordat with Poland, art. 7).
The reasons for which the necessity or the opportunity of assigning certain priests to the specific task of assistance to the military has been recognized in every age are intuitive. Belonging to the military very often creates - especially in time of war - grave difficulties for the faithful in having recourse, for their own spiritual needs, to the territorial ecclesiastical hierarchies: whence the institution of military chaplains. Without resorting to too remote historical precedents, it is enough to recall the priests who followed the legions of the emperor Constantine, those who accompanied the communal militias into combat, the same spiritual assistance to the troops carried out through the work of the glorious monastic-military orders and, finally, in an era much closer to our own, the almoners of the Sardinian army and the chaplains of the Spanish, Austrian, Neapolitan armies, etc.
II. ATTRIBUTIONS OF THE MILITARY CHAPLAIN
Under the title de parochis, canon 451 § 3 of the CIC considers the figure of the military chaplain after having dealt in the preceding paragraphs with the parish priest and the persons who are equated with him. For the military chaplain it is here laid down: «circa militum cappellanos sive maiores sive minores, standum peculiaribus Sanctae Sedis praescriptis».
This is enough to warn us that, although it is permissible to define the military chaplain as a personal parish priest, one cannot however refer purely and simply to general principles, but must have recourse to the special law established by the apostolic provisions concerning spiritual assistance to the troops.
These provisions vary according to the relations existing between the Holy See and the States, but in any case they can be reduced to three categories: a) assignment of priests to the assistance of soldiers, with the persistence of the normal subjection to the exclusive authority of the local Ordinary; b) institution of a major chaplain (military vicar) to whom are temporarily conferred more or less extensive faculties, including that of subdelegating them to other priests; c) constitution of an autonomous hierarchical order, in which the military chaplains and the faithful entrusted to their spiritual assistance are subjected to their own Ordinary (military Ordinary), who exercises his episcopal jurisdiction iure proprio, albeit cumulatively with that of the diocesan Ordinaries and, with respect to the latter, with precedence in places destined for soldiers (barracks, airfields, arsenals, schools, military hospitals, etc.), as declares the decree of the Sacred Congregation Consistorial, 13 Apr. 1940, concerning the jurisdiction of the military Ordinary in Italy (AAS, 32 [1940], p. 280). It is easy to grasp at once the difference that exists between the first and the other two types of arrangement: in the first the military chaplain exercises his spiritual jurisdiction within the territorial limits of the diocese; in the other two types of arrangement, he exercises it independently of any territorial relationship.
As a general principle it may be established that, whenever there is no particular apostolic norm which provides otherwise, military chaplains depend on the local Ordinary. Thus, for example, in the conflicts of competence that arose between bishops and royal major chaplains of the kingdoms of Spain, Austria and Naples, the Sacred Congregations always decided in the sense that to the local Ordinary alone belonged the appointment of military chaplains and the right to grant them the appropriate faculties for the fulfillment of their functions. Nor, on the other hand, does the mere appointment of a priest with inspection functions over military chaplains, as, for example, the appointment of the two inspectors, one for the priests and clerics serving in the army, the other for those serving in the French navy, made by the decrees of the Sacred Congregation Consistorial 19 Nov. 1917 and 30 Apr. 1918 (AAS, 9 [1917], p. 566, 10 [1918], p. 238) - suffice to exempt him from episcopal jurisdiction.
The military vicar or major chaplain, in order to be able to exercise his jurisdiction independently of the local Ordinary, must be furnished with the appropriate faculties by the Holy See. This is what happened at the beginning of the last world conflict, when by decree of the Sacred Congregation Consistorial 8 Dec. 1939 (cited above) there were expressly conferred on the major chaplains or military vicars, limited to the period of the duration of the war, the faculties there listed, to be habitually subdelegated to the military chaplains or to other priests, secular and regular, in military service. Such a regime was established in all the nations and regions at war or in a state of mobilization, excepted, of course, those provided with a military ordinariate.
From the figure of the military vicar, even though invested with the episcopal dignity (field bishop), there must therefore be clearly distinguished the figure of the military Ordinary: and the preeminent distinguishing note lies precisely in the jurisdiction which the former exercises by delegation, the latter iure proprio, to which is connected the temporariness of the jurisdiction of the first as against the stability of the jurisdiction of the second.
As regards the military chaplain, the qualification of personal parish priest and the consequent properly parochial competences must certainly be recognized in the chaplain subject to the jurisdiction of the military Ordinary, while they should be excluded in the priest who exercises his ministry by virtue of the faculties subdelegated to him by the military vicar. The military chaplain, moreover, who enjoys parochial competences, does not enjoy them in relation to all soldiers, but only in relation to the soldiers belonging to that unit or those units to whose spiritual assistance he is specifically assigned: which, in Italy, has recently been specified by a special decree of the military Ordinary.
Spiritual assistance to soldiers has often been regulated by concordats, as, for example, in Spain, Austria, Lithuania, Germany, Poland. In the Concordat with Poland (10 Febr. 1925) it is expressly established (art. 7) that military chaplains have, in relation to the faithful subject to them, the rights of the parish priest and that they exercise the functions of their ministry under the jurisdiction of a bishop (évêque d'armée), who has the right to choose them.
III. THE MILITARY CHAPLAIN IN ITALY
As regards Italy, the regime in force at the time of the First World War was undoubtedly that of the military vicar, whose office was, within the framework of the state legal order, established by Decree-Law No. 1022 of 27 June 1915 and abolished by Royal Decree No. 1552 of 29 Oct. 1922, by which the military chaplains were also abolished, except for some retained for the navy, for the collection of the bodies of the war dead and for the arrangement of war cemeteries. These represented, so to speak, the seed that continued the life of the organization until the establishment of the military ordinariate, which was canonically erected by decree of the Sacred Congregation Consistorial of 6 March 1925 and recognized by the Italian State by Law No. 417 of 11 March 1926.
The Concordat with Italy (11 Feb. 1929) found this situation and accepted it, regulating it in Articles 13, 14 and 15, which were followed by Law No. 848 of 27 May 1929, containing the rules concerning appointments to ecclesiastical offices and benefices (Art. 3), Royal Decree No. 2184 of 25 Nov. 1929 and finally Law No. 77 of 16 Jan. 1936 with its implementing regulation contained in Royal Decree No. 474 of 10 Feb. 1936. From this body of norms and from other supplementary ones there emerges the special arrangement that has been given in Italy to the "service of spiritual assistance to the armed forces" (Art. 1 of Law of 16 Jan. 1936). The Military Ordinary, whose jurisdiction extends to the army, the navy, the air force, the finance guard, the police forces, the prison officers, the fire brigades, the military personnel of the C. R. I. and of the S. M. O. M., as well as to the male and female religious personnel assigned to military hospitals, is invested with the archiepiscopal dignity (Art. 13, paragraph 3 of the Concordat) and is placed at the head of the Chapter of the church of the Pantheon in Rome (Art. 15). His appointment, together with that of his immediate coadjutors (vicar general and inspectors), is made, upon designation of the Holy See, by decree of the President of the Republic, on the proposal of the President of the Council of Ministers, in agreement with the Minister of the Interior. The appointment of the chaplains is likewise provided for by decree of the President of the Republic, but on the proposal of the competent minister and upon designation of the Military Ordinary.
Requirements for the appointment of priests, secular and regular, to the office of military chaplain are possession of Italian citizenship and enjoyment of political rights, as well as being under forty years of age. A title of preference is having served in war or having obtained military distinctions (Art. 6 of the Law of 16 Jan. 1936).
The same law provides (Arts. 8 and 9) for the assimilation of rank (respectively of the Military Ordinary to the grade of major general, of the vicar general to that of brigadier general, of the inspectors to that of lieutenant colonel, and finally of the chief chaplains and the chaplains to the grade of captain and lieutenant), the financial treatment of the ecclesiastical personnel assigned to the assistance of the armed forces, as well as (Art. 17) subjection to military penal and disciplinary jurisdiction, limited to the case of total or partial mobilization or of embarkation and always with the prior opinion of the Ordinary.
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Ermanno Graziani