La nullità dell'ordinazione sacerdotale

Abstract: The contribution is dedicated to the declaration of the nullity of priestly ordination, which in canon 290 CIC is provided that it can be declared judicially or administratively, while in the canons dedicated to the causes for the declaration of the nullity of ordination - canons 1708-1712 - the judicial way is mainly considered. This complex matter has since 2011 become the responsibility of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, to which, however, recourse is rarely made, due to the difficulties of being able to prove it in court, since it affects the sacrament of Orders, which imprinting an indelible character, is never annullable, nor repeatable, so those who leave the ministry prefer to request a dispensation from the obligations related to the clerical state, which obviously does not affect the ontological configuration received with the sacrament of Orders. In the procedure of canons 1708-1712 it is a matter of ascertaining the existence of causes that may have conditioned the actual internal intention of the person receiving the Sacrament, an extremely complex examination bearing in mind that there is a presumption of validity regarding the correspondence of the externally expressed intention with the internal one (can. 124 § 2 CIC), to which, however, as we shall see, other causes of nullity could be added.