On Tuesday, Pope Francis modified canon law concerning the governance of Opus Dei and any future personal prelature.
In a motu proprio published on August 8, the Pope assimilated the personal prelature to "public clerical associations of pontifical right having the faculty to incardinate clerics." He also defined the role of the prelate as a "moderator endowed with the faculties of an ordinary."
The motu proprio modifies canons 295 and 296 of the Code of Canon Law on personal prelatures and entered into force immediately on the day of its publication.
The updated canons now specify that the statutes governing a personal prelature can be "approved or issued by the Apostolic See."
To date, the international Catholic organization Opus Dei is the only personal prelature in the Catholic Church. The group's statutes still need to be approved by the Holy See following its extraordinary congress in April.
Opus Dei is a personal prelature composed of laity and priests, founded by Saint Josemaría Escriva in 1928. He named it to emphasize his conviction that its foundation was a "work of God," in Latin "opus Dei."
Canon 296 on the involvement of the laity in the personal prelature now includes a reference to canon 107 and emphasizes that "the manner of this organic cooperation and the principal duties and rights connected to it will be appropriately determined in the statutes."
These changes build upon the Pope's previous decree on the supervision of Opus Dei, published last year in the motu proprio "Ad Charisma Tuendum," which stated that its leader, the prelate, could no longer be a bishop.
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In the text of the decree, Pope Francis also recalls that the apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium transferred competence over personal prelatures to the Vatican Dicastery for the Clergy.
Reacting to the latest changes, Opus Dei spokesman Manuel Sanchez told CNA that the organization "will study the consequences these changes may have on the juridical configuration of Opus Dei, also in the context of the work being carried out with the Dicastery for the Clergy on the adaptation of the statutes required by the motu proprio Ad Charisma Tuendum, in a climate of communion with the Holy Father."
Opus Dei has approximately 90,000 members, 98% of whom are laity, mostly married. In addition to its lay members, some 1,900 priests incardinated in different dioceses worldwide belong to the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, an association of clerics intrinsically united to the Prelature of Opus Dei.
This article was originally published by the National Catholic Register (Article Link). It is republished and translated with the author's permission.