§ 2. From the Council of Trent

Nineteenth ordinary-mode excommunication. If anyone of the clerics or laymen, with whatever dignity he may excel, even imperial or royal, has been so occupied by cupidity, the root of all evils, that he has presumed to convert to his own uses and usurp, by himself or through others, by force or fear struck in, or even through supposed persons of clerics or laymen, or by any art or under whatever color sought, the jurisdictions, goods, revenues and rights, even feudal and emphyteutic, fruits, emoluments, or any income whatever of some church, or of any secular or regular benefice, montes pietatis, and other pious places, which ought to be converted to the necessity of ministers and the poor, or to impede them from being received by those to whom they pertain by right, let him lie under anathema for so long as he has not fully restored to the church and its administrator or beneficiary the jurisdictions, goods, things, rights, fruits, and revenues which he has occupied, or which have come to him in any way whatever, even from the donation of a supposed person, and then has obtained absolution from the Roman pontiff. But the cleric who has been the maker of such nefarious fraud and usurpation, or consenting to it, is subject to the same penalties. Sess. 22. c. 11. De reform.

91. a. This censure protects ecclesiastical goods taken in the broadest sense, namely any temporal goods and rights whatever pertaining to churches, religious places, or pious places; to these also in part article 11 and 12 of the first series refer. Therefore in cases which pertain to both censures, the censure reserved in a special mode is contracted.¹

b. Clerics and laymen contract the censure who usurp the goods of the Church, by authoritatively occupying them as owed to themselves by right, or who impede them from being received by those to whom they pertain by right, by occupying them as if pertaining to themselves and converting them to their own uses. Clerics incur the censure if they even only consent to these actions.

c. In this matter they dispute whether all usurpations are punished by this censure, or only authoritative ones, namely those which are done through public authority. From the declaration of the holy see, thieves and robbers do not incur this censure.²

d. Finally, those also incur this censure who have bought goods of this kind from usurpers or have acquired them under another title (donation, inheritance, legacy, etc.).³

¹ Holy Office, July 8, 1874.

² Holy Office, March 9, 1870.

³ Holy Office, July 8, 1894.