FABBRICA E FABBRICERIA. — In canon law, fabbrica means the church or sacred building in its material structure, and thus the temple and any annexed buildings necessary for worship. Fabbriceria is the body responsible for administering that part of a Church’s patrimony which is intended for the preservation and maintenance of the fabbrica and for expenses connected with worship; it may also mean the entity constituted, in its material substratum, by a body of assets whose revenues are intended for a given Church for the purposes mentioned above.
Not every church has, nor must necessarily have, a fabbriceria, since these purposes can also be provided for without the existence of a separate patrimony and its own administration, either through the revenues of the benefice or in some other way: offerings from the faithful, contributions from municipalities or other entities, etc. It is therefore not an institution deriving from canon law, according to a typical model, a set of constant rules governing its existence; rather, it developed in different places in forms and with characteristics that were sometimes profoundly diverse.
The origin of the fabbriceria may be discerned in the very ancient institution known as the partio or quarta fabricae, which appears in the financial organization of the Church from the fifth century onward. At that time, when the need was felt to regulate the distribution of ecclesiastical revenues, which had been concentrated entirely in the hands of the bishop in a single fund administered by him, the popes Simplicius and Gelasius made a uniform system of distribution obligatory. The income was divided into four parts (three in Spain), of which one was assigned to the bishop (quarte episcopi), one to the clergy of the diocese (quarta cleri), one to the poor (quarta pauperum), and the last to the ecclesiastical fabbrica (quarta fabricae), that is, to the maintenance of the church and its accessories and to the exercise of worship. The spread of the faith and the need for worship outside episcopal sees, and the consequent emergence of new churches in towns and the countryside, including through private foundations, gradually brought about a change in the ancient system of administering ecclesiastical patrimony, with the elimination of the bishop’s central administration and the establishment of the new beneficiary system, founded on the economic independence of individual Churches. The onus fabricae thus came to be transferred to the holder of the benefice, since the revenues of the ecclesiastical patrimony assigned to the benefice were indivisibly allocated to his remuneration and to the purposes of maintaining and conducting services in the church (beneficium indistinctum). In many places, however, two separate and autonomous bodies of assets were instead established (beneficium distinctum), one constituting the beneficiary patrimony and the other, called patrimonium fabricae, intended, through its revenues, to provide for the preservation and embellishment of the church and the exercise of worship. This second autonomous body of assets, supplied particularly by offerings from the faithful and often by public entities, was consequently destined to be subject to greater or lesser interference by laypeople, who wished to manage it or at least control it and therefore intervened in its administration in various forms. Thus there arose administrations generally characterized by the predominant intervention of the lay element which, recognized by the Council of Trent (chap. 9, sess. XXII de ref.), assumed in the various regions not only different forms and names (in northern Italy fabbricerie and fabbriche, in Tuscany and Umbria opere, in the Neapolitan area cappelle, in Sicily maranane, etc.), but often also substantial differences in juridical nature. At times they constituted various moral entities or distinct juridical persons, holders of the patrimony and possessing a board of administration (consilium fabricae), with broader or narrower lay participation, and at times composed exclusively of laypeople with the assistance of some ecclesiastic; on other occasions, however, the fabbriceria was simply the collegial body competent to administer the patrimony intended for the needs of the fabbrica, separate but still under the ownership of the individual parish or church.
Canon law, as has been indicated, did not provide a typical framework for this institution; indeed, since the normal participation of the lay element in ecclesiastical administration was in itself contrary to the general direction of the rest of canonical discipline, and also in view of the abuses to which such participation gave rise through intrusions into matters pertaining purely to worship and liturgy, the Church always sought to restrict its action and bind it as closely as possible to the control and direction of ecclesiastical superiors. Canon law therefore limited itself to providing for the existence of the council of the fabbrica (consilium fabricae) as a tolerated possibility, but always in the nature of collaboration, while leaving intact in principle the original status of the officeholder as ecclesiastical administrator (cf. cann. 1182–84).
The legislation of the various States, on the other hand, sought to promote the tendency toward lay administration of patrimonies intended for the maintenance of fabbriche. Thus, within the individual legal systems, a juridical regulation of fabbricerie was established that was independent of canonical norms and considerably expanded their concept and functions. Particularly notable in this respect were the French laws of the Napoleonic period, which made these institutions autonomous associations composed of laypeople for governing and administering everything connected with the patrimony of churches, with only the participation of the rectors and limited interference by the diocesan authority, under the supervision of the civil authorities. In Italy, the Napoleonic decree of 30 Nov. 1809 (for the Ligurian and Piedmontese provinces) and the Italic law of 15 Sept. 1807 (for Lombardy–Venetia) were inspired, to a greater or lesser extent, by these directives and remained in force for more than a century. In Piedmont, however, after the restoration of 1812, once French law had been abolished, the fabbricerie ceased to be regulated by civil provisions, whereas in the other provinces they were governed by custom or ecclesiastical provisions, and in some places by particular statutes. Thus, profound differences persisted in their operation and juridical nature, especially because some fabbricerie existed as juridical persons, while others were merely internal institutions with administrative functions.
The Concordat of 1929 limited itself to establishing, by means of a negative provision, that “administrative councils, wherever they exist and whatever their designation, even if composed entirely or for the majority of laypeople, must not interfere in services of worship, and the appointment of their members shall be made by agreement with the ecclesiastical authority” (art. 29, lett. A). The implementing law of 27 May 1929, no. 848 reaffirmed the principle, and the regula-
The implementing law of 27 May 1929, no. 848, reaffirmed the principle, and the executive regulation of 2 December 1929 established the rules for the operation of the institutions in question under the supervision and protection of the Minister of Justice (now the Minister of the Interior), to be exercised in agreement with the ecclesiastical authority. Serious questions arose concerning the interpretation of these provisions, especially as regards whether, as a result of them, the juridical personality of those fabbricerie that had previously possessed it should be considered abolished, the respective representation of the fabbriceria and the church, and so forth; these doubts were resolved only in part by the subsequent R. D. of 26 September 1935, no. 2032. Setting aside here these overly technical questions, it is nevertheless important to note that the latter measure helped clarify the concept of fabbriceria for the purposes of the aforementioned law and regulation, in the sense that only Councils possessing deliberative voting power in the administration of property are to be understood as such, and not commissions that assist, through merely consultative activity, the diocesan ordinary, or the parish priest or rector, as administrators of their respective churches. These administrations are therefore not subject to governmental supervision and protection, but are simply governed by the provisions of canon law.