01879 - Comparative Italian Ecclesiastical Law

Learning outcomes

The course aims to equip students with the knowledge and the skills that are needed in order to be able to deal effectively with all those problems that, being linked to the impact of the religious factor in the dimension of law, have been assuming a growing relevance in today’s pluralist society, which is marked by the ‘return of the sacred’ and the emergence of new elements of complexity regarding the promotion and protection of religious freedom in Italy both in its individual and collective dimension. Such issues affect many fields of the legal system (from the constitutional structure to public administration, from criminal protection to marriage and family relations, etc.) and in order to face them it is necessary to combine the right to equality and the aspiration to recognize diversity in an attempt to ensure a peaceful and balanced civil coexistence: seeking, also through the comparison between different legal experiences, appropriate solutions within the framework outlined by the Constitution, by the current regulatory provisions (legislative and non-legislative, unilateral and bilateral) and by the European-derived rules, without neglecting the contribution of Italian and supranational case-law.

Course contents

The course will develop the contents reported below, divided into thematic areas and modules.

 

The following subjects will be covered in Module 1:

INSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

I. Relations among Religions and between Religion and Politics in European History

• The Connection and the Break with Judaism: Christians and the Roman Empire
• ‘Barbarians’ and the Catholic Church: Origins and Development of the Holy Roman Empire
• The Clarification of the Boundaries of Catholicism: The Schism of the Eastern Church
• The Conflict with Islam
• From the Gregorian Reform to the Medieval Theocratic ‘Dream’: the Age of the Ius Commune
• The End of Medieval Christendom, the Protestant Reformation, and Royal Absolutism: Political and Religious Particularism
• From Jurisdictionalism to Separatism
• Different Systems and Models of Relations between State and Religion: from Theory to Historical Practice

II. Public Authority and the Religious Phenomenon in Italy: from Liberal Jurisdictionalism to Confessionalism and the Supreme Principle of State Secularism 

• National Unification, the Legislation Suppressing Ecclesiastical Property, the Debellatio of the Papal State, the Law of Guarantees. The Status of Non-Catholic Religious Denominations
• Towards Reconciliation through the Model of Coordination and Cooperation. The Stipulation of the Lateran Pacts and the Establishment of the Confessional State. Legislation on ‘Admitted Religious Denominations’
• The Entry into Force of the Republican Constitution and the Regulation of Religious Matters. The Position of the Catholic Church: Article 7(1) and the ‘Distinction of Orders’
• Article 7(2) of the Constitution and the Significance of the Explicit Reference to the Lateran Pacts
• The Villa Madama Agreement
• Article 8(1) and (2) of the Constitution: Equal Freedom and Statutory Autonomy
• Article 8(3) of the Constitution and the ‘Promise of Bilaterality’. The Subsequent ‘Seasons of Agreements’. Their Content and the Procedure for Their Stipulation. The Legal Nature of the Agreements and of the Approving Law
• Necessary Bilaterality and Diffuse Bilaterality
• The Characterisation of the State in Religious Matters. Constitutional Court Jurisprudence and Ecclesiastical Law. The Supreme Principle of State Secularism
• State Bodies and Public Entities Competent in Matters Concerning the Religious Phenomenon. In Particular, the Fund for Places of Worship
• Sources of Ecclesiastical Law: between the Constitution and Ordinary Legislation, between Unilateral and Bilateral Law, between State and Regional Competences
• Supranational Sources and Religious Freedom
• Institutional Relations between States and Religious Denominations in Europe

III. Contemporary Context and Open Issues

• Multicultural and Multireligious Society
• The Difficult Definition of Religious Denomination and the ‘New Religious Movements’
• The Case of the Italian Union of Atheist, Agnostic and Rationalist Associations (UAAR). The ‘Right’ to Conclude an Agreement versus Executive Discretion
• Denominations with Agreements, De Facto Religious Groups and Recognised Denominations. The Islamic Communities
• Draft General Laws on Religious Freedom. Possible Perspectives de iure condendo
• Public Funding of Religious Denominations: Tax-Deductible Donations and the ‘Eight per Thousand’ of Personal Income Tax
• Ministers of Religion and Other Confessional Figures
• The System of Clergy Support in the Catholic Church
• The Disciplinary Authority of Religious Denominations
• The Catholic Church in the International Community. The Vatican City State: Origins and Developments in Its Relations with Italy and the European Union
• The European Union and Relations between States and Religious Denominations

 

The following subjects will be covered in Module 2:

INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE ASPECTS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

I. The Projections of Individual Religious Freedom 

• Article 19 of the Italian Constitution: Recognition of Religious Freedom and Its Limits
• Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Case Law of the Strasbourg Court
• Article 10 of the Charter of Nice. The Case Law of the Court of Justice of the European Union
• Freedom of Conscience and Conscientious Objection. Religious Freedom and Bioethical Issues
• Religious Freedom and Education
       - The Teaching of Religion in Public Schools
       - Educational Parity and Confessional Schools
• The Religious Factor and Labour Law Regulation
• Spiritual Assistance in Custodial and Total Institutions
• Religiously Compliant Dress in Civil Law: Convergences and Divergences between National, Supranational and Comparative Perspectives
• Religious Dietary Prescriptions
• The Evolution of the Criminal Protection of Religious Sentiment in the Italian Legal System and Culturally Motivated Crimes
• The Issue of ‘Debaptism’. Personal Data Protection and Religious Freedom
• Religious Freedom in the Digital Dimension
• Intersections between Religious Freedom and the Condition of Migrants

II. The Projections of Religious Freedom of Groups

• Article 20 of the Italian Constitution: Entities with a Religious or Worship Purpose, Religious Entities, and Confessional Entities
• Between Bilateral Legislation and Ordinary Law, with Particular Reference to the Third Sector
• Freedom of Expression and Propaganda, Hate Speech, and Fundamentalisms
• Places of Worship
• Cultural Heritage of Religious Interest: Bilateral and Unilateral Regulation
• Religious Tourism
• Religious Symbols and Public Space
• Ecology and Religious Denominations
• Safeguarding Religious Freedom within the Family
• Religious Laws on Marriage and Family: Cases and Limits of Their Relevance
• Recognition of Religious Marriages in Italy
       - The Civil Relevance of Religious Marriage, in Particular Canonical Marriage, from pre-unification Italy to the Lateran Pacts
       - The Transcription of Marriages Celebrated before Ministers of the Catholic Church
       - The Transcription of Marriages Celebrated before Ministers of Religious Denominations without an Agreement
       - The Regulation of Marriage in the Laws Approving Agreements with Religious Denominations pursuant to Article 8(3) of the Constitution
       - The Recognition of Confessional Jurisdiction in Matrimonial Matters
       - The Civil Effects of Canonical Jurisdiction. The Issue of the Survival of the Ecclesiastical Jurisdictional Reserve
       - The Recognition of Canonical Judgments of Marriage Nullity
       - Exequatur and Declaration of Cessation of Civil Effects
  

 

Students who attend the lessons will be offered the opportunity to carry out an in-depth work on a subject of their choice, with the help of the Professors. During the lessons, attending students will be informed about the reduction of the program (and of the parts of the handbook) that they will have to study.

For the integration of 1, 2, 3, credits, students must contact the Professors by e-mail to define a custom program.

Erasmus students must contact the Professors by e-mail to define a custom program.

Readings/Bibliography

G. BONI, Diritto ecclesiastico. Principi generali e questioni, con la collaborazione di I. SAMORÈ, A. TOMER, N. TONTI, con i contributi di D. AIROMA, D. BIANCHINI, A. SARAIS, Zanichelli Editore, Bologna, 2026.

Students who attend the course will follow a facilitated exam program. They will also be given the opportunity to prepare – with the assistance of the teachers – a paper about specific issues in which they are particularly interested, that will be evaluated during the final exam and will concur to the overall assessment.

In the course of the lessons, the teachers will recommend and supply teaching aids and further learning material, following the students’ specific requests and interests. The material will be uploaded to the teachers’ web page and made accessible to students.

Teaching methods

The course will develop through lectures, seminars and meetings with experts.

Lectures will be given in the IInd semester. As a consequence, students obtaining their attendance certificate in the current academic year are allowed to take their exam only starting from the month of May. The exam program coincides with the subjects of the course.

Students will be informed about dates and times of the seminars and the meetings with experts during the lectures or through notices, also on the Faculty website. The teachers use slides (or other supplementary material) that will be made available to students on the Virtuale (Virtual Learning Environment) platform.

Students who attend the course will be invited to actively take part in the analysis of the themes studied in class: students will also be given the opportunity to prepare – with the assistance of the teachers – a written paper about specific issues in which they are particularly interested, that will be previously corrected and discussed together, and then evaluated during the final exam, thus concurring to the overall assessment. For this purpose, one or more practice sessions will be held in classroom or online, in parallel to lessons, in which methods for searching for sources and bibliographic materials, and for the formal writing, structuring and drafting of juridical texts will be explained: on this occasion, students will be given time for questions, requests for clarification and further information.

Assessment methods

Only students who have already taken the exams of Constitutional law and Private law are admitted to the final exam.

The verification of learning outcomes consists in an exclusively oral final exam, which will explore the acquisition of the required knowledge and skills through an oral examination sustained with the teachers.

The exam will cover the issues described in the “Course contents” section. The examination entails the assignment of a grade.

Through such exam, the knowledge learned and the critical and methodological skills acquired by the student will be assessed.

In addition to the possession of a mastery of expression and of an appropriate technical language, the student will also have to prove to be able to move confidently within the system of the legal sources on the matter, to have a clear perception of the received information and to have understood and adequately deepened the themes that were addressed in class and explained in the reference textbooks, which will have to be described and argued properly. Learning such skills is easier during the course, the attendance of which is recommended in order to improve the learning process and therefore the student’s performance during the exam.

 

Namely, about the oral exam:

 As previously mentioned, the aim of the oral exam is to assess the actual achievement of the learning outcomes: therefore, both the knowledge of the relevant legal issues and the student’s capability to apply it in order to realize the required logical-deductive connections will be taken into account.

By way of a mere example, the assignment of the final grade will be based on the following criteria:

Sufficient knowledge of a very small number of the topics addressed during the course and analytical skills that only emerge through extensive support by the interviewer, with the use of a language that is not incorrect but is not completely accurate either → 18-19;

Fairly good knowledge of a limited number of the topics addressed during the course and analytical skills that are autonomous only on purely executive issues, with the use of a correct but not fully confident and exhaustive language → 20-24;

Good knowledge of a wide number of the topics addressed during the course and capability to develop autonomous analytical skills, with an efficient and confident use of a technically specific language → 25-29;

Extensive and substantially exhaustive knowledge of the whole program addressed during the course, capability to develop very good legal reasonings and to critically analyze and connect different topics, with a fully confident use of a technically specific language that shows a mature ability to develop original reflections → 30-30L.

The students who attend the course will also be given the opportunity to prepare – with the assistance of the teachers – a paper about specific issues they’re particularly interested in, which will be evaluated during the final exam and will concur to the overall assessment.

Students with learning disorders and/or temporary or permanent disabilities: please contact the office responsible (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students) as soon as possible so that they can propose acceptable adjustments. The request for adaptation must be submitted in advance (15 days before the exam date) to the lecturer, who will assess the appropriateness of the adjustments, taking into account the teaching objectives.

As regards assessment of learning, since the examination is exclusively oral, the use of AI is prohibited. Any use constitutes a violation of academic integrity.

Students have to book the final exam on the web application AlmaEsami.


Thesis

For the assignment of a thesis, students must go to the teachers' office hours in order to discuss and select the subject.

Teaching tools

During the lessons the teachers will recommend and supply texts and further learning material to complete the preparation.

Students will be informed about dates and times of the seminars and the meetings with experts during the lectures and through notices on the Faculty website.

The teachers use slides that will be made available to students on the Virtuale (Virtual Learning Environment) platform in order to help them understanding the issues and the institutes explained during the lessons.

Students who need compensatory tools for reasons of disability or Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) will communicate to the teachers their needs so as to be directed to the dedicated person and arrange on the adoption of the most appropriate measures.

Office hours

See the website of Alberto Tomer

See the website of Manuel Ganarin