CONDONATION. - It is the indult or act of grace by which the Supreme Pontiff, availing himself of his supreme power of jurisdiction, legitimizes and canonizes, for both the internal and the external forum, the title of ownership in those possessing goods of the Church unjustly usurped by the State by force of laws subversive of the ecclesiastical patrimony. It entails the total remission of the debt of restitution and, save for the modalities proper to each individual indult, the automatic remission of the canonical penalties that may have been incurred.
It differs strictly from composition, inasmuch as the latter, unlike the former, is for the most part a partial remission of the debt contracted, is exercised in the internal forum and implies in a certain way a transaction between the two holders of the relationship.
Given that the subject of the right of ownership of ecclesiastical goods is the juridical person that has legitimately acquired such goods (can. 1499 § 2), the act juridically takes the form of a true expropriation of the body originally owning them and finds its canonical juridical foundation in the supreme primacy of jurisdiction by virtue of which the Supreme Pontiff is the supreme administrator and dispenser of all ecclesiastical goods (can. 1518).
The purpose of c. is to provide for the tranquillity of consciences, remedying the painful situations that arose in consequence of the very severe penalties sanctioned by the Church against the usurpers and the unwary holders of usurped goods.
A plenary c. was granted in its time by Pius VII to France in art. 13 of the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801. A clause of plenary c. was likewise contained in art. 16 of the Concordat with the Italian Republic of 1803, which nevertheless had no effect whatsoever owing to the denunciation of the Concordat itself made by Pius VII even before ratification. A special indult of c. also benefited the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1819, the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1828, Belgium in 1833, the Kingdom of Prussia in 1894 and Spain in the Concordat of 1851 and in the Additional Convention of 25 Aug. 1859.
In unified Italy the measures of sanatoria, following the suppressions of 1865-66, had different phases and different scope. At first, with the instruction of 1 June 1896 of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the possessors of ecclesiastical goods were authorized to continue in the possession and enjoyment of the same, yet at the disposal of the Holy See (ad nutum ecclesiae) if immovable property was involved, or of the local Ordinary if movable property was involved, with the burden of transmitting them to their heirs with the same clause.
Subsequently, from Jan. 1890, the norm was adopted of admitting the interested parties to benefit, in individual cases, from an indult of composition, a norm then made general by the instruction of 15 Apr. 1892 of the Penitentiary. The payment of a fair sum was imposed by way of partial compensation, to be determined taking into account persons and circumstances; after which, following absolution from the censures, the title of ownership remained definitively healed. For the said composition the local Ordinaries were also competent when the interested parties in the acquisition of ecclesiastical goods had not paid more than 50,000 lire.
With the Lateran Concordat of 1929 a third phase begins. In art. 28 it was agreed that the Holy See would grant a plenary c. to all those who, in consequence of the Italian laws subversive of the ecclesiastical patrimony, had found themselves in possession of ecclesiastical goods. The sanatoria therefore was neither automatic, nor conferred on the mass of interested parties, as it had been in previous concordats with other nations, but had to be made concrete through a subsequent act of the Holy See. Such an act is the instruction of 12 May 1929 of the Penitentiary, on the basis of which the remission is made possible for individuals, who, duly disposed, submit to the sacramental absolution of their faults and censures and add, in agreement with the confessor, an alms to be passed on to the local Ordinary, yet not by way of compensatory composition as was provided in the previous practice. Expressly excepted from the remission are the possessors of sacred buildings. The remission is granted for the internal forum, but may have effect also for the external forum by means of a document that confessors are authorized to issue.