Agreement between the State of Israel and the Holy See (Vatican) - 1997

OFFICIAL TEXT AS SIGNED IN JERUSALEM,
NOVEMBER 10, 1997

1. The State of Israel agrees to assure full effect in Israeli law, in accordance with the provisions of this Agreement, to the legal personality of the following:
   1. these Eastern Catholic Patriarchates: the Greek Melkite Catholic, the Syrian Catholic, the Maronite, the Chaldean, the Armenian Catholic (hereinafter: the "Eastern Catholic Patriarchates");
   2. the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, id est the Latin Patriarchal Diocese of Jerusalem;
   3. the present Dioceses of the Eastern Catholic Patriarchates;
   4. new Dioceses, wholly in Israel, Eastern Catholic or Latin, as may exist from time to time;
   5. the "Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land".
   6. The Holy See states, for the avoidance of doubt, that the listing in par. 1 does not prejudice in any way the established order of precedence of the Heads of the various entities, according to their personal rank and as it is fixed by traditional usage and accepted by them.
   7. For the avoidance of doubt, it is stated that the question of assuring full effect in Israeli law to the legal personality of any new cross-border Diocese is left open.
   8. For the purposes of this Agreement, a Parish is in integral part of the respective Diocese, and, without affecting its status under the canon law, will not acquire a separate legal personality under Israeli law. A Diocese may, subject to the canon law, authorise its Parishes to act on its behalf, in such matters and under such terms, as it may determine.
   9. In this Agreement, "Diocese" includes its synonyms or equivalents.

      
      

      Article 4

      The State of Israel agrees to assure full effect in Israeli law, in accordance with the provisions of this Agreement, to the legal personality of the Custody of the Holy Land.

       

      
      

      Article 5

      The State of Israel agrees to assure full effect in Israeli law, in accordance with the provisions of this Agreement, to the legal personality of the following, as they exist from time to time in Israel:

       

      1. the Pontifical Institutes of Consecrated Life of the kinds that exist in the Catholic Church, and such of their Provinces or Houses as the Institute concerned may cause to be certified;
      2. other official entities of the Catholic Church.

         
         

         Article 6

         1. For the purposes of this Agreement the legal persons referred to in Articles 3-5 (hereinafter, in this Article: "legal person"), being established under the canon law, are deemed to have been created according to the legislation of the Holy See, being Sovereign in international law.
         2.  
            1. the law which governs any legal transaction or other legal acts in Israel between any legal person and any party shall be the law of the State of Israel, subject to the provisions of sub-paragraph (b).
            2. Any matter concerning the identity of the head, of the presiding officer or of any other official or functionary of a legal person, or their authority or their powers to act on behalf of the legal person, is governed by the canon law.
            3. Without derogation from the generality of sub-paragraph (b), certain kinds of transactions by a legal person concerning immovable property or certain other kinds of property, depend on a prior written permission of the Holy See in accordance with Its written Decisions as issued from time to time. Public access to the aforesaid Decisions will be in accordance with the Implementation Provisions.
         3.  
            1. Any dispute concerning an internal ecclesiastical matter between a member, official or functionary of a legal person and any legal person, whether the member, official or functionary belongs to it or not, or between legal persons, shall be determined in accordance with the canon law, in a judicial or administrative ecclesiastical forum.
            2. For the avoidance of doubt it is stated that the provisions of 2(a) shall not apply to disputes referred to in the above sub-paragraph (a).
         4. For the avoidance of doubt, it is stated:
            1. a legal person, whose legal personality is given full effect in Israel, is deemed to have consented to sue and be sued before a judicial or administrative forum in Israel, if that is the proper forum under Israeli law.
            2. Sub-paragraph (a) does not derogate from any provision in Articles 6-9.

         
         

         Article 7

         The application of this Agreement to any legal person is without prejudice to any of its rights or obligations previously created.

          

         
         

         Article 8

         1. For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this Agreement shall be construed as supporting an argument that any of the legal persons to which this Agreement applies had not been a legal person prior to this Agreement.
         2. If a party makes a claim that such a legal person had not been a legal person in Israeli law prior to this Agreement, that party shall bear the burden of proof.

            
            

            Article 9

            Should a question with regard to the canon law arise in any matter before a Court or forum other than in a forum of the Catholic Church, it shall be regarded as a question of fact.

             

            
            

            Article 10

            The terms "ecclesiastical" and "canon law" refer to the Catholic Church and Its law.

             

            
            

            Article 11

            1. Without derogating from any provision, declaration or statement in the Fundamental Agreement, the ecclesiastical legal persons in existence at the time of the entry of this Agreement into force are deemed as being legal persons in accordance with the provisions of this Agreement, if listed in the ANNEXES to this Agreement, which are specified in par. 4.
            2. The ANNEXES form, for all intents and purposes, an integral part of this Agreement.
            3. The ANNEXES will include the official name, respective date or year of establishment in the Catholic Church, a local address and, if the head office is abroad, also its address.
            4.  
               1. ANNEX I list

Document Revives WWII-Era Vatican Debate

VATICAN CITY - A document that surfaced recently in church archives has revived debate about a contentious post-World War II issue: the Vatican 's attempt to keep hold of some Jewish children who were protected from the Nazis by Roman Catholic " Christian" families.

The 1946 circular apparently instructed French church authorities that Jewish children baptized as Roman Catholics, for safety or other reasons, should remain within the church — even if that meant not returning them to their own families once the Nazi occupation ended.

The document, published in Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper this week, caused a stir for its tough, clear wording, though several historians said it offered no major revelations on an issue that emerged across Europe after the war.

One Jewish leader called the letter "horrible."

"It's a dry, bureaucratic document, which has no feeling for the Holocaust, I'm sorry to say," Amos Luzzatto, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, told the Apcom news agency.

The one-page document, dated Oct. 23, 1946, advised French church authorities on how to handle information requests from Jewish officials, asking them not to put anything in writing.

"Children who have been baptized must not be entrusted to institutions that cannot ensure their Christian education," says a copy of the French-language letter obtained by The Associated Press.

One of the letter's most jarring lines says that children whose families survived the Holocaust should be returned, "as long as they had not been baptized." Those whose parents were killed "should not be abandoned by the Church," even if they had not received the sacrament.

That stance on baptism predated the Holocaust by nearly a century — in 1858, papal guards took a 6-year-old Jewish boy named Edgardo Mortara from his family in Bologna, Italy, after hearing he had been secretly baptized by a Catholic housemaid.

The 1946 letter shows how seriously the church still treated the sacrament — and how it was unable to grasp the implications of the Nazi extermination of Jews, said Michael Marrus, a Holocaust historian at the University of Toronto.

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JERUSALEM AND THE HOLY PLACES

Statement issued at the conclusion of conversations with the Vatican's Special Envoy, Monsignor Felici, 11 July 1967:

In July 1967, Under-Secretary of State Monsignor Angelo Felici was sent from the Vatican to Jerusalem on a special mission to discuss the situation in the Holy City with the Government of Israel. After meeting with the Prime Minister and other Israeli officials, the following statement was issued:

"At the meeting between Monsignor Felici and Prime Minister Eshkol, which took place in an atmosphere of cordiality and mutual understanding, various possible formulas were discussed which might be considered with a view to reaching a satisfactory solution of the most important question relating to the Holy Places. The talks will continue."

Source: IFM