PIous UNION. - It is an association of the faithful established for purposes of piety or charity. It is not essential that it be a moral person; for its juridical existence and spiritual capacity, the simple approval of the Ordinary suffices. However, if it acquires an organic structure through formal erection, it takes the name of sodality (cf. cann. 707 § 1, 705 CIC). Thus, only pious unions are the works of the Holy Childhood and of St Francis de Sales; the Missionary Union of the Clergy, instead, is a sodality.
Before the promulgation of the CIC, the terms: confraternities, congregations, sodalities, pious unions, were used indiscriminately even by ecclesiastical authority. The CIC, instead, clearly distinguishes the Third Orders, the confraternities, and the pious unions, assigning to each respectively as a discriminating element the purpose of personal sanctification, of worship, or of Christian piety or charity. The pious unions, although approved by the Church, do not always rise to the full status of juridical entities like the Third Orders and the confraternities; they constitute an intermediate category between the lay associations founded for purposes without the authority or approval of the Church, but merely recommended or praised by it (Conference of St Vincent de Paul, Association of Catholic Action), and the ecclesiastical associations erected as moral persons. Indeed, by virtue of the decree of approval, a pious union receives from ecclesiastical authority public recognition that entitles it to obtain spiritual graces and indulgences, subjects it to the jurisdiction of the Church, but does not confer perpetuity upon it; and its members remain united by a personal bond and may therefore separate at will. The goods that it possesses belong to the members, who are however bound to respect both the conditions laid down by the donors and the special destination to which they consented to devote such goods at the time of their enrolment.
Under this form, pious unions began to appear in the Church after the Council of Trent and multiplied especially in recent centuries, that is, after the encroachment of the modern State upon the ecclesiastical sphere had elevated the lay figure of confraternities to a principle, subjecting them to its authority and impeding their free exercise of Christian piety and charity.
Like confraternities, pious unions may be established in collegiate churches, with the consent of the Chapter, or even in semi-public oratories, but never in private ones. In churches of religious orders, only pious unions of prayer are permitted (cf. cann. 712), with the exclusion of men. The competence to erect pious unions belongs by right to the Ordinary, who may also approve their statutes and regulations (cf. can. 686). The autonomy of pious unions, in the economic and cultural sphere, vis-à-vis the parish priests, pertains to the associations, and thus to the pious unions, erected in their own church; this independence is not lost even if, by chance, the church of the pious association should house the seat of the parish (cf. cann. 691, 716). But if the pious union is a guest in another’s church, it cannot interfere in the exercise of worship in the chapel or altar assigned to it, and its accounts are separate from the management of the church’s goods. This patrimonial distinction is also prescribed in the case of co-ownership ex aequo of the same church by the pious union and the parish (cf. can. 717).
It is clear that the autonomy of pious unions does not exempt individual members from the rights inherent in the office of their proper parish priest, and in particular from the ius funerandi within the limits of common law. The contacts between pious unions and other associations in the exercise of worship are determined, in precedence, by the descending hierarchy: Third Orders, effective and honorary archconfraternities; confraternities; effective and honorary primary pious unions; pious unions (cf. cann. 701). In the same order of precedence, precedence is regulated according to the norms of common law, by quasi-possession or, failing that, by priority of time. In any case, the exercise of the right of precedence is inseparable from the collegial and official intervention of the members with their banner and respective insignia (cf. can. 710). The insignia, the outward profession of the associative bond, have juridical importance. Their form ranges from a simple badge to a complete habit, and it is for the chaplain to bless and confer them according to the approved rite (cf. can. 698 § 2). This faculty of the chaplain is considered ordinary and therefore delegable without any special permission. By virtue of the Lateran Concordat (arts. 30–32), pious unions, like all pious associations—except for the special juridical treatment accorded to confraternities—depend exclusively on ecclesiastical authority and may obtain from the Italian State even juridical recognition for civil purposes and, consequently, authorization to acquire and possess even immovable goods. According to the executive regulation of the law of 27 May 1929, no. 848, the application for recognition of juridical personality is submitted by their representative to the Minister of the Interior.
Even the pious associations, and thus the pious unions juridically recognized by the Italian State, remain excluded from any state interference, save for observance of arts. 4, 5, 9 of the law of application concerning respectively any substantial change in the purpose, in the destination of goods, and in the mode of existence of pious associations, their educational or welfare activity, as well as their capacity to acquire immovable property, to accept donations, inheritances, or bequests.