Title XXX: Of Pious Foundations

§ 1. By the name of pious foundations are signified temporal goods given in any way to some moral person in the Church, with the burden in perpetuity or for a long time of celebrating some Masses from the annual revenues, or fulfilling other predefined ecclesiastical functions, or performing some works of piety and charity.

§ 2. A foundation, legitimately accepted, assumes the nature of a synallagmatic contract: I give so that you may do.

It belongs to the local Ordinary to prescribe norms concerning the quantity of endowment below which a pious foundation cannot be admitted and concerning its fruits to be rightly distributed.

§ 1. In order that foundations of this kind can be accepted by a moral person, the consent of the local Ordinary, given in writing, is required; he is not to provide it before he has legitimately ascertained that the moral person can satisfy both the new burden to be undertaken and the old burdens already undertaken; and he is especially to take care that the revenues correspond entirely to the attached burdens according to the custom of each diocese.

§ 2. In the acceptance, constitution, and administration of a foundation, the patron of the church has no right.

Money and movable goods assigned by name of endowment are immediately to be deposited in a safe place to be designated by the same Ordinary, for this end: that the same money or the price of the movable goods be preserved and, as soon as possible, be placed cautiously and usefully, according to the prudent judgment of the same Ordinary, after both those whose interest it is and the diocesan Council of administration have been heard, for the advantage of the same foundation, with express and individual mention of the burden.

§ 1. Foundations, even those made by living voice, are to be consigned in writing.

§ 2. One copy of the documents is to be safely preserved in the archive of the Curia, the other in the archive of the moral person to which the foundation pertains.

§ 1. With the prescriptions of can. 1514-1517 and can. 1525 observed, in any church a tablet of the burdens incumbent from pious foundations is to be made, which is to be preserved by the rector in a safe place.

§ 2. Likewise, besides the book of which in can. 843, Sec. 1, another book is to be kept and preserved by the rector, in which each perpetual and temporary burden, and their fulfillment and alms, are to be noted, so that an exact account concerning all these things may be rendered to the local Ordinary.

If there is question of pious foundations in churches, even parochial ones, of exempt religious, the rights and offices of the local Ordinary, of which in can. 1545-1549, belong exclusively to the major Superior.

§ 1. The reduction of burdens which weigh upon pious foundations is reserved to the Apostolic See alone, unless another thing is expressly provided in the documents of foundation, and with the prescription of can. 1517, Sec. 2 preserved.

§ 2. An indult of reducing founded Masses is not extended either to other Masses due from contract or to other works of the pious foundation.

§ 3. But a general indult of reducing the burdens of pious foundations is to be understood thus, unless another thing is established: that the holder of the indult reduce other burdens rather than Masses.