Title XV: Of the Crime of Falsehood

§ 1. All fabricators or falsifiers of letters, decrees, or rescripts of the Apostolic See, or those knowingly using the same letters, decrees, or rescripts, incur by the fact itself excommunication reserved in a special manner to the Apostolic See.

§ 2. Clerics committing the delict of which in Sec. 1 are moreover to be coerced by other penalties, which can extend even to privation of benefice, office, dignity, and ecclesiastical pension; but religious are to be deprived of all offices which they have in religion and of active and passive voice, besides other penalties established in the proper constitutions of each one.

If anyone in petitions for obtaining a rescript from the Apostolic See or from the local Ordinary has withheld the truth or set forth falsehood by fraud or deceit, he can be punished by his Ordinary according to the gravity of the fault, with the prescription of can. 45, 1054 preserved.

Fabricators or falsifiers of ecclesiastical letters or acts, whether public or private, or those knowingly using documents of this kind, are to be coerced according to the gravity of the delict, with the prescription of can. 2406, Sec. 1 remaining firm.

If anyone by himself or through others has falsely denounced a confessor to Superiors concerning the crime of solicitation, he incurs by the fact itself excommunication reserved in a special manner to the Apostolic See, from which he cannot in any case be absolved unless he has formally retracted the false denunciation and, as far as he can, repaired damages, if any have followed from it; moreover a grave and long-lasting penance is to be imposed, with the prescription of can. 894 remaining firm.