Apostolic prefect

An apostolic prefect or prefect apostolic is a priest who heads what is known as an apostolic prefecture, a missionary area where the Catholic Church is not yet sufficiently developed to have it made a diocese.

If a prefecture grows and flourishes, it may be elevated to an apostolic vicariate, headed by a titular bishop, in the hope that with time the region will generate enough Catholics and stability for its Catholic institutions, to warrant being established as a diocese.

The usual sequence of development is: mission, prefecture, vicariate, diocese.

The apostolic prefecture and the apostolic vicariate are to be distinguished from the territorial abbacy (formerly called an "abbey nullius").

During the last centuries of the second millennium it was the practice of the Holy See to govern either through prefects apostolic or apostolic vicariates, many territories where no dioceses with resident bishops were erected and where local circumstances, such as the character and customs of the people or hostility of civil powers, made it doubtful whether an episcopal see could be permanently established. The establishing of a prefecture apostolic in a place supposes that the Church has attained only a small development in the area. Fuller growth leads to the foundation of an apostolic vicariate as an intermediate stage to becoming a diocese.

A prefect apostolic is of lower rank than a vicar apostolic. The prefect's powers are more limited and do not normally possess the episcopal character, as is ordinarily the case with a vicar apostolic. The duties of a prefect apostolic consist in directing the work of the mission entrusted to his care; his powers are in general those necessarily connected with the ordinary administration of such an office, for instance: the assigning of missionaries and the making of regulations for the good management of the affairs of the mission. Until the Second Vatican Council, the prefect apostolic had extraordinary faculties for several cases reserved otherwise to diocesan bishops, such as absolutions from censures, dispensations from matrimonial impediments and the faculty of consecrating chalices, patens, and portable altars, with some having the power to administer Confirmation.

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