Apostolic Expeditor - History

History

In a restricted and specific sense, expeditors or expeditioners are laymen approved by the Dataria, after an examination, to act as agents for bishops or others before the Dataria or Apostolic Chancery. They are members of the Roman Court.

They differ from solicitors as well as from procurators or agents in general, who transact business with the Roman Congregations. A solicitor, strictly speaking, is an assistant to a procurator, doing the mechanical work of preparing documents. An expeditor is more concerned with matters of favour, privileges, dispensations and so on, than with cases in litigation. It has been the practice of the Dataria and Apostolic Chancery to carry on business only with authorized agents or expeditors, whose office it is to draw up and sign the necessary documents, receive and forward the answer given.

They receive a certain fixed fee for each transaction, while procurators and solicitors generally receive a monthly stipend. The number of expeditors has varied. Cardinal Pacca, pro-datarius, decided in 1833 that the number, which was then one hundred, should be regulated by the amount of business to be transacted. Circa 1900 there were about thirty. In reorganizing the Roman Court, Pope Pius X deprived these expeditors of their exclusive right to appear before the Dataria and Apostolic Chancery.

Read more about this topic:  Apostolic Expeditor

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.
    Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)

    We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.
    Terry Hands (b. 1941)

    History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.
    Karl Marx (1818–1883)