RELIGIOUS SUPERIOR. - He who has the legitimate power to command the members of a religious society or a part of it.
I. In canon law there are major and minor superiors. Among the former are to be numbered all the supreme superiors of centralized religious institutes, the abbot primate of the confederated Benedictine monastic congregations, the abbot president of the individual Benedictine congregations themselves (v. BENEDICTINES), the provincial superiors and others who, although not bearing the same name, in fact have the same ordinary powers; furthermore all their vicars when they have ordinary powers (can. 488, n. 8). It should be noted that in monastic religions, in the Canons Regular and in houses sui iuris, whether male or female, the local superior, whether he be called abbot or prior or by any other name, is truly a major superior. Minor or local superiors are all those who in a centralized religion (v. RELIGION) have command of a house. Another canonical distinction must be made between major superiors who hold a permanent, continuous office, and those who have authority only in determined circumstances. Such are the visitors of many religions, especially monastic ones; it is necessary, however, that they have ordinary powers, not merely delegated ones, in which case they do not come under the name of religious superior, as, for example, the one delegated by the major superior to make a canonical visitation is not a major superior. A third distinction must be made between collegiate and personal religious superiors. Among the former are the General Chapter, the Diet and other assemblies that act as a single body with collegial responsibility. All other superiors are personal, that is, individually responsible even if they have a council, whose opinion they must hear, except when superior and council perform acts as a college, as happens in certain cases, in which there is a collegiate superior.
II. In religious communities superiors are legitimately constituted either by a free election or by an appointment. This happens especially in centralized religions - where only the major offices, of supreme superior, councillor, procurator, and generally treasurer and secretary general, are filled by election, in the General Chapters (v. CHAPTER) - while for all other offices appointment by the major superiors very frequently occurs. Sometimes the provincial Chapters, although competent to elect their own provincial superior, must receive a confirmation of their decision from the supreme government. The election or appointment of superiors represents one of the rights typical of religions (can. 501 § 1) from their very beginning; nevertheless, since the Roman Pontiff is also the supreme superior of all religions, he has the power, by himself or through the competent Roman Congregations, to impose a religious superior who, naturally, has the same rights and duties as those elected or appointed by the religion (can. 499). The manner, the juridical conditions and the qualities required to be elected or appointed depend on the CIC and on the constitutions. The common conditions for being supreme superiors are set out by can. 504: it is necessary to be legitimate children, to have ten years of profession, 40 years of age to be supreme superiors or 30 to be a major superior; and, in general, to possess all the moral qualities of prudence and government necessary for such offices. The duration in office of all religious superiors is limited in time, save for an express provision to the contrary in the constitutions of the religion (can. 505). Local minor superiors, moreover, cannot remain in office beyond a six-year term in the same house, without a prior dispensation of the Holy See (can. 505). For the superiors of female religions in Italy (whether centralized religions or monasteries) the instruction of the S. Congr. of Religious of 9 March 1920 (AAS, 12 [1920], p. 365) must also be kept in mind, according to which a superior general or local abbess cannot be re-elected for the third consecutive six-year term, without postulation and confirmation of the Holy See.
III. The rights and duties of religious superiors are in direct proportion both to the territorial scope and to the limitations that canon law and the constitutions establish, especially in centralized religions, where the distinction between supreme superior and provincial and local superior is of the greatest importance. The fundamental right and duty of every religious superior is to strive with all means of authority, prudence and charity so that the subjects may attain the religious holiness to which they have vowed themselves, and so that the religion or province or house over which they are placed may attain the special ends proper to the institute, approved by the Holy See. The power, even if dominative, by which religious superiors command is without doubt of a public nature, both because they govern organisms of a universal nature, in many respects similar to dioceses, and because such power draws its origin from the same supreme public source of all authority, that is, the Roman Pontiff, who gives juridical status to religions. In exempt religions it is also a power of jurisdiction that confers on the major superiors of the same the rank of prelates and of Ordinaries according to canon law (cann. 110, 198, 501 § 1); to the supreme superiors belongs, as their own general right, that of commanding over all the provinces, regions, houses of the religion and over all and each of the members of the religion itself (can. 502). The supreme religious superior also becomes, from the moment of his election, the exclusive representative of the religion as such, with power to obligate, act and answer both in canon and in civil law. Among the principal rights and duties are to be remembered: that of admission and regulation of professions (can. 572); of the assignments of members to the various offices, of the convocation of General Chapters, of the canonical visitation (v.), of temporary dispensations from the observance of merely disciplinary constitutions, of the drafting of the quinquennial and annual reports (can. 510), of care for the formation of novices, etc. In religions divided into provinces, those acts for which canon law speaks of major superiors, and expressly of supreme superiors, are within the competence of the provincial superiors, unless the individual constitutions specifically provide otherwise. The power of local superiors in centralized religions is subordinate to the constitutions of each institute, with the exclusion, in general, of authority in the more important matters both of government and of administration. The superiors of monasteries or houses sui iuris, on the other hand, are true Ordinaries and to them therefore belongs all the authority that the CIC attributes to Ordinaries (can. 198 § 1).