Ponens (Ponente)

PONENS (Ponente). - A designation given particularly to prelates charged with reporting on causes or matters heard before the tribunals or Congregations of the Roman Curia, and now also generally to judges having the function of relators in proceedings before ecclesiastical tribunals.

The origin of the term, in its first meaning, is connected by old authors with the functions that belonged to prelates in the Congregations or dicasteries responsible for the temporal affairs of the territories subject to the sovereignty of the Holy See, whose various provinces or districts were called ponenze. "Since among these prelates they distributed the provinces of the Papal State, with the name and term ponentia, so each was called p., reporting or proposing the business and causes of his ponenza" (Moroni). In its present meaning, current in the judicial order of the Church, p. is the reporting magistrate who is a member of the judging panel. It is a general established rule that in every collegiate tribunal the president designates one of the judges as p. or relator, with the task of reporting on the cause to the other judging members and of drafting the sentence in writing. It falls to the p. to propose his conclusions first in the council chamber in the discussion for the decision of the cause; to his functions are then naturally connected the various duties inherent in the instruction of the cause itself. The president of the panel himself may assume the functions of p., but for matrimonial causes only if the tribunal consents; he may moreover, for just cause, substitute another p. for the one already appointed.

Particular powers and faculties are attributed to the p. in causes before the Tribunal of the Sacred Roman Rota, both insofar as the presidency of the turn to which the cause is assigned is devolved upon them, and insofar as they are given the broadest faculties for the rapid and complete handling of causes, among them that of supplying without further ado for the proofs and exceptions if the public good or the salvation of souls is at stake.

In causes of beatification and canonization before the Sacred Congregation of Rites, the p. must be one of the cardinals belonging to the Congregation itself, appointed by the Pontiff. It is his task to study with particular care the cause assigned to him and to report to the Congregation everything that is for or against that same cause.

Arnaldo Bertola