INDULTO. — According to its etymological meaning (from indulgere), the term designates any concession, permission, or favor. In modern civil law, an i. is an act by which a penalty is pardoned, in whole or in part, and has the same effect as a pardon, but differs from it because the i. is general and impersonal, whereas the pardon is limited to one or more specific persons. In canon law, the term i. does not have an equally well-defined meaning. Some, including among the more recent authors, understand it as an exemption from the law, that is, as a negative privilege freeing one from a preceptive law; others, instead, use it more broadly in the sense of any favorable concession, contra or praeter ius, provided that it is temporary. The Council of Trent, with regard to the law of residence, nevertheless also speaks of perpetual privileges or i. contrary to this obligation, and suppresses them (sess. VI, can. 2, de ref.; in the same sense also sess. XXIV, can. 18, de ref.). The name i. is generally applied to the concessions that the Roman Pontiffs have made, even without temporal limits, to kings, bishops, parliaments, universities, etc., concerning benefices, holydays of obligation, affiliation, and fasting, even by way of derogation from ecclesiastical laws.
The CIC (can. 4) establishes that, like acquired rights, privileges and i. granted by the Holy See, not revoked and still in use when the CIC entered into force, remain intact unless they are expressly revoked. Privileges and i. granted by a power inferior to the Apostolic See, if contrary to the CIC, are instead abolished (can. 64 § 2), without the need for an express clause. In view of the distinction that the CIC sometimes makes (cf. can. 964, n. 4) between privilege and i., some canonists maintain that the revocation of the privilege does not entail the revocation of the i.
In addition to the CIC, i. granted by the Holy See may nevertheless be revoked by that same Apostolic See. Thus, by the decree Proxima sacra of 25 Apr. 1918 (AAS, [1918], p. 190), the Sacred Congregation of the Council revoked the i. contrary to the CIC that were contained in the faculties granted ad tempus to Ordinaries, with the exception of those granted by the Sacred Penitentiary for the internal forum, or obtained on the occasion of the war or for special reasons.
For the interpretation, duration, and cessation of i., the norms established for rescripts, privileges, and dispensations apply. Particular norms for i. are found in cann. 1049 and 1057: can. 1049 states that a person who possesses a general i. permitting him to dispense from a certain impediment may, unless the i. provides otherwise, dispense from the same impediment even when it is multiple; whoever possesses a general i. permitting him to dispense from several impediments of different kinds, whether diriment or prohibitive, may dispense from those same impediments even when they occur together in the same case and are public. Can. 1057 adds that when a dispensation from an impediment is granted by virtue of a power delegated by the Holy See, mention must be made of the pontifical i. The omission of such mention does not, however, invalidate the dispensation (can. 11).