The Briand-Ceretti Agreement is a 1926 agreement whereby French diocesan bishops are nominated by the Vatican after a process involving the French Ministries of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs.
This agreement saw the resolution of an impasse whereby the Vatican had refused to recognise the Associations Cultuelles voted in the 1905 legislation in the spirit of the 1901 Loi sur les Associations and accepted by the Jewish and Protestant religious bodies. The agreement made possible the forming of Associations Diocésaines with members appointed by the bishops.
In the case of the Concordat dioceses of Strasbourg and Metz it is the French President who, after consultations with the Vatican, makes the appointments of diocesan bishops, which are published in the Journal Officiel de la République.
The Briand-Ceretti agreement was posterior to the forced retirement of the saintly Benedictine bishop of Metz, Willibrord Benzler, in 1919 and only provides a very vague analogy for the depositions at the Liberation.
Among the many consequences of this agreement was the reluctance to appoint ordinaries likely to call into question the spoliations and expropriations that the French church underwent between 1790 and 1905. The veto has been rarely used but its existence induces caution in nunciature circles when proposing candidates. Disagreements are known from time to time to occur (e.g. a reference by the former ambassador to the Vatican Jean Guégenou on France-Culture on 13 July 2009). The system also indirectly ensures that, almost without exception, French citizens alone are employed in Catholic administration and schools in France.
The 1926 agreement also involved the maintenance of liturgical honours (seating, incensing) paid to French consular personnel in the former Ottoman territories. This practice is now believed to have fallen into abeyance.
Famous quotes containing the word agreement:
“The doctrine of those who have denied that certainty could be attained at all, has some agreement with my way of proceeding at the first setting out; but they end in being infinitely separated and opposed. For the holders of that doctrine assert simply that nothing can be known; I also assert that not much can be known in nature by the way which is now in use. But then they go on to destroy the authority of the senses and understanding; whereas I proceed to devise helps for the same.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)