Franciscan superiors ask pope to allow brothers to be elected leaders

[rpannier]

ROME - The superiors of the four main branches of the Franciscan friars formally asked Pope Francis for permission to allow their communities to elect brothers to positions of leadership in their communities.

“With us Pope Francis is looking at the possibilities for moving this project forward,” Father Michael Perry, minister general of the Friars Minor, told Vatican Radio. “We left a letter as a formal request for a dispensation” from canon law requirements that in most religious orders with both priests and brothers only a priest can be elected to the top leadership offices.

snip

The rules governing eligibility for leadership in religious orders with a strong mix of brothers and priests - especially if those orders, like the Franciscans, were founded without distinction between lay and ordained - has been going on since the Second Vatican Council.

snip

Still, for orders like the Franciscans in which most members are priests, the Vatican has insisted that ordination is a requisite for “the power of governance.” It has vetoed the election of brothers as superiors of orders that have more priests than brothers as members, even when the order’s constitutions do not insist the superior be a priest.

link
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2017/04/11/franciscan-superiors-ask-pope-allow-brothers-elected-leaders/