The Dicastery for the Clergy

What the Dicastery covers today

Article 113 of Praedicate Evangelium sets out the Dicastery's general mission in two paragraphs:

"The Dicastery for the Clergy deals with all matters relating to priests and deacons of the diocesan clergy, with regard to their persons and pastoral ministry, and everything needed for the fruitful exercise of the latter. In these matters, it provides suitable assistance to the Bishops." "The Dicastery expresses and implements the solicitude of the Apostolic See with regard to the training of candidates for Holy Orders." — Pope Francis, Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium, art. 113 §§ 1-2^[6]

This general mission is broken down into seven areas of competence listed in articles 114 to 120: the formation of seminarians (art. 114), the life and discipline of clerics in active ministry, including monitoring the shortage of priests (art. 115), clerical status and dispensations from the obligations of priesthood and the diaconate (art. 116), personal prelatures (art. 117), a series of administrative disciplines concerning diocesan councils, associations of clerics, ecclesiastical archives and pious foundations (art. 118), the administration of ecclesiastical goods (art. 119), and finally the presidency of the Pontifical Work for Priestly Vocations and of a permanent interdicasterial commission on formation for Holy Orders (art. 120)^[7].

What falls outside its remit

Three clarifications usefully delimit the Dicastery's scope. First, it does not govern bishops themselves: their appointment, discipline and governance fall to the Dicastery for Bishops (arts. 103-112 of Praedicate Evangelium), whose history and competences are the subject of a dedicated article. Second, it has no authority over the clergy of the Eastern Catholic Churches — Melkite, Maronite, Ukrainian, Syro-Malabar, and so on — whose proper discipline falls entirely to the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches. Finally, and this is the most significant clarification for public opinion, the Dicastery for the Clergy does not handle cases of sexual abuse of minors committed by clerics: that exclusive competence belongs to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which examines such cases under a specific canonical penal procedure — the motu proprio Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela (2001) having reserved these most serious offences (delicta graviora) to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, while Vos Estis Lux Mundi (2019) organised the reporting and investigation procedure as well as the accountability of bishops in this area^[8]. This clarification is necessary: the Dicastery for the Clergy nevertheless remains competent, upstream, for the administrative status of clerics — dispensations, transfers, incardination — which explains why its name sometimes appears, wrongly, linked to disciplinary cases that in reality belong to another body.

1564: Pius IV and the motu proprio Alias Nos

On 2 August 1564, less than a year after the close of the Council of Trent (4 December 1563), Pope Pius IV (Giovanni Angelo Medici, 1559–1565) promulgated the motu proprio Alias Nos, instituting the Sacred Congregation of Cardinals for the Interpretation of the Council of Trent (Sacra Congregatio Cardinalium Concilii Tridentini interpretum), more simply called the Congregation of the Council^[9]. Its initial mission was narrow but crucial: to guarantee the correct interpretation and the practical application of the disciplinary decrees of the Council — in particular those concerning the obligation of residence for bishops and parish priests, the discipline of ecclesiastical benefices, and the moral reform of the clergy, which had been at the heart of the Tridentine debates in the face of the abuses denounced by the Protestants^[10]. The first president of the new congregation was a twenty-six-year-old cardinal destined for sainthood: Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan, a major architect of the concrete application of the Tridentine reform in his own diocese^[11].

The institution of a permanent congregation to interpret Trent answered an urgent need: the conciliar decrees, voted in twenty-five sessions spread over eighteen years (1545–1563), left many questions of application open, and Rome had to offer the bishops of the whole world a single authority of reference, so that each diocese would not interpret Tridentine discipline in isolation.

Sixtus V and the Tridentine Curia (1588)

By the apostolic constitution Immensa Aeterni Dei of 22 January 1588, Pope Sixtus V reorganised the entire Roman Curia into fifteen permanent congregations and formally enrolled the Congregation of the Council among them, specifying its attributions: interpreting the Tridentine canons, overseeing provincial councils and diocesan synods, and verifying observance of the episcopal residence obligation^[12]. This was the moment when the institution, until then relatively informal, acquired its definitive status as a central dicastery of the government of the Church.

Urban VIII removes oversight of residence (1634)

In 1634, by the constitution Sancta synodus Tridentina, Pope Urban VIII withdrew from the Congregation of the Council the direct oversight of episcopal residence, henceforth entrusted to a distinct structure headed by the Cardinal Vicar of Rome^[13]. This transfer illustrates a recurring dynamic in the history of the institution: over the centuries, its competences were regularly carved up and redistributed among several Roman bodies, without its underlying mission — the discipline of the secular clergy — ever disappearing.

Benedict XIV and the "little congregation" (1740)

Pope Benedict XIV, a renowned canonist, created in 1740 a sub-commission known as the "congregation of the small council" (super statu ecclesiarum), charged with examining the reports that the bishops of the whole world had to submit to Rome during their ad limina Apostolorum visits^[14]. This function of periodic review of the state of dioceses — pastoral vitality, state of the clergy, material situation — remained one of the characteristic tasks of the Congregation of the Council until the 20th century. Under the same pontificate, the congregation saw its competence extended to cases of marriage nullity (1741) and nullity of religious vows (1748), a considerable enlargement which made it, for nearly two centuries, a genuine ecclesiastical tribunal with highly diversified competences, well beyond the discipline of the clergy alone^[15].

Pius VI, Leo XIII and the 19th-century adjustments

Pope Pius VI, by the constitution Sacrosanctam Tridentinam synodum of 27 November 1775, in turn reformed the administrative competences of the congregation^[16]. A century later, in 1879, Leo XIII attached to it the Congregation of Ecclesiastical Immunity, charged with defending the jurisdictional and fiscal privileges of the clergy and of Church property against modern States — a particularly sensitive competence at the time of the German Kulturkampf and the anticlerical laws in several countries of Latin Europe^[17].

1908: Saint Pius X and the Sapienti Consilio reform

The deepest reform the institution underwent before the end of the 20th century was that of Saint Pius X. By the apostolic constitution Sapienti Consilio of 29 June 1908, the Pope entirely reorganised the Roman Curia and redefined the competences of the Congregation of the Council, refocusing it on three main axes: the discipline of the secular clergy and the laity, the observance of the precepts of the Church (fasting, abstinence, holy days of obligation), and the preservation and administration of the temporal goods of the Church^[18]. The same reform removed from it the matrimonial competences acquired under Benedict XIV — transferred to the new Congregation of the Discipline of the Sacraments — and attached to it, by absorption, the Congregation of Our Lady of Loreto, suppressed on that occasion^[19]. It was this 1908 reform that for the first time brought the institution close to its contemporary profile: a congregation dedicated no longer to the general interpretation of Tridentine law, but specifically to the discipline of the diocesan clergy.

1967: Paul VI and the birth of the "Congregation for the Clergy"

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and its general reform of the Roman Curia, Pope Paul VI promulgated on 15 August 1967 the apostolic constitution Regimini Ecclesiae Universae, which renamed, effective 1 January 1968, the Sacred Congregation of the Council as the Congregation for the Clergy^[20]. The new name reflected four centuries of gradual refocusing: the institution had long since ceased to be charged with interpreting all the Tridentine decrees, but was specifically concerned with the life and discipline of secular priests and deacons. The same reform transferred to the Congregation for Bishops the examination of the acts of provincial councils, the last competence of general scope inherited from the foundation of 1564^[21].

The same Paul VI restored, in the same year, an institution that Vatican II had made possible once again: by the motu proprio Sacrum Diaconatus Ordinem of 18 June 1967, he re-established the permanent diaconate in the Latin Church, seventeen centuries after its gradual disappearance as a stable state of life^[22]. The dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium of Vatican II (21 November 1964) had paved the way by teaching that "the diaconate can in the future be restored as a proper and permanent rank of the hierarchy"^[23], including for married men, subject to the agreement of the episcopal conferences and the Holy See. From the outset, this restoration placed the formation and discipline of permanent deacons under the same authority as that of secular priests — hence their constant presence, still today, within the field of competence of the Dicastery for the Clergy alongside diocesan priests.

1970–1992: the magisterium of priestly formation

The Second Vatican Council devoted an entire decree to the ministry and the life of priests, Presbyterorum Ordinis (7 December 1965), which lays the modern theological foundations of priestly identity:

"Priests by sacred ordination and mission which they receive from the bishops are promoted to the service of Christ the Teacher, Priest and King. They share in his ministry, a ministry whereby the Church here on earth is unceasingly built up into the People of God, the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit." — Second Vatican Council, decree Presbyterorum Ordinis on the ministry and life of priests, preamble no. 1, 7 December 1965^[24]

On this conciliar basis, the Congregation for Catholic Education — then competent in matters of priestly formation — promulgated on 6 January 1970 the first Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis, a worldwide framework norm for the formation of seminarians, amended on 19 March 1985 to incorporate the new 1983 Code of Canon Law^[25]. Pope John Paul II crowned this effort with the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis of 25 March 1992, a reference text which structures the formation of priests around four inseparable dimensions: human, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral^[26].

1994: the first Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests

The Congregation for the Clergy published on 31 January 1994 the Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests, the first synthesis text devoted no longer to initial formation alone but to priestly existence as a whole: spirituality, exercise of ministry, ongoing formation, canonical discipline. This founding text would be thoroughly revised a generation later, in 2013, under the pontificate of Benedict XVI^[27].

2013: Benedict XVI redistributes two major competences

Two reforms by Benedict XVI, promulgated on the same day, profoundly reshaped the scope of the congregation. By the motu proprio Ministrorum Institutio of 16 January 2013, the pope transferred to it responsibility for seminaries, removed from the Congregation for Catholic Education which had held it since the 1988 reform (Pastor Bonus)^[28]. The text explains this choice by the pedagogical continuity between the initial and the ongoing formation of priests:

As recalled in the introduction of the 2016 Ratio Fundamentalis, Benedict XVI wished to entrust to the Congregation for the Clergy — already competent for ongoing formation — responsibility for initial formation in the seminary, the formation of seminarians continuing naturally in the ongoing formation of priests to form with it a single reality^[29].

On the same day, a second motu proprio, Fides per Doctrinam, removed from the Congregation for the Clergy competence over catechesis, transferred to the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization — the body which would in turn merge, in 2022, into the Dicastery for Evangelization^[30]. The congregation published in the same year, on 11 February 2013, a thoroughly revised second edition of the Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests^[31].

2014-2016: drafting the new Ratio Fundamentalis

Now competent for initial formation as well as ongoing formation, the Congregation for the Clergy undertook, from spring 2014, the drafting of a new Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis, intended to replace the 1970 text. A first draft was submitted to the plenary assembly of the congregation meeting from 1 to 3 October 2014, where Pope Francis, in his opening address, offered the image that would give its title to the final document:

"It is a matter of protecting and fostering vocations, so that they may bear ripe fruit. These are a "rough diamond", to be cut with care, respect for the conscience of persons and patience, so that they may shine among the People of God." — Pope Francis, address to the plenary assembly of the Congregation for the Clergy, 3 October 2014, quoted in the introduction of The Gift of the Priestly Vocation^[32]

The text was then enriched by contributions from several Roman dicasteries — evangelization of peoples, institutes of consecrated life, Eastern Churches, Catholic education — then sent in 2015 to many episcopal conferences and nunciatures for consultation, in a spirit of synodality^[33]. On 19 and 20 November 2015, the congregation organised an international symposium for the fiftieth anniversary of the conciliar decrees Optatam Totius and Presbyterorum Ordinis, bringing together cardinals, bishops, formators and experts on the formation of candidates for holy orders^[34]. After a final review by the Secretariat of State and several doctrinal dicasteries, the definitive text, entitled The Gift of the Priestly Vocation, was promulgated at Rome on 8 December 2016^[35].

2017: sanctuaries transferred

By the motu proprio Sanctuarium in Ecclesia signed on 11 February 2017 (made public on 1 April 2017), Pope Francis removed from the Congregation for the Clergy competence over sanctuaries — places of pilgrimage, canonical recognition, statutes — hitherto exercised secondarily, and entrusted it to the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization^[36]. This last redistribution, five years before the great reform of 2022, completed the refocusing of the institution on its core competence: the persons of secular clerics, their formation and their ministry.

On 19 March 2022, on the solemnity of Saint Joseph, Pope Francis signed the apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium on the Roman Curia, the fruit of nine years of consultation by the Council of Cardinals (the "C9") begun at the start of his pontificate. The text entered into force on 5 June 2022, on the solemnity of Pentecost^[37]. The reform renamed almost all Roman congregations as "dicasteries", in an explicit desire to level hierarchies within the Curia — all heads of dicasteries, clerics or lay people, henceforth theoretically able to exercise a task of government in the pope's name. The Congregation for the Clergy thus became the Dicastery for the Clergy, without substantial change of competence compared with the state reached after the 2013 and 2017 reforms^[38].

Article 120, which closes the section devoted to the Dicastery, institutes within it two permanent bodies chaired ex officio by the prefect: the Pontifical Work for Priestly Vocations and the Permanent Interdicasterial Commission for Formation for Holy Orders^[39] — a sign that the worldwide vocations crisis, already noted in article 115 § 3, holds a structural place in the very architecture of the new Dicastery.

Seminaries, a direct legacy of the Council of Trent

The obligation for each diocese to found a seminary goes back directly to the Council of Trent. At its 23rd session, on 15 July 1563, the decree on the reform of the clergy, in chapter XVIII (Cum adolescentium ætas), made it obligatory for every diocese to found a seminary for the formation of the local clergy, where young clerics would live in community under the direction of priest educators, shielded from the moral abuses denounced on the eve of the Reformation^[40]. In France, the first seminary was founded as early as 20 March 1564 by the Cardinal of Lorraine, Archbishop of Reims — barely a year after the close of the council^[41]. Since 2013, it is the Dicastery for the Clergy that exercises, on behalf of the Holy See, oversight of the community life and governance of all seminaries, except those dependent on other dicasteries for territorial reasons (Eastern Churches) or statutory reasons (institutes of consecrated life)^[42].

The Gift of the Priestly Vocation: the current norm

The 2016 Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis organises the formation process into four successive pedagogical stages — propaedeutic, discipleship, configuration, pastoral — combined with the four dimensions of the seminarian's person defined by Pastores Dabo Vobis in 1992: human, spiritual, intellectual and pastoral. The text opens with a programmatic statement:

"The gift of the vocation to the priesthood, placed by God in the hearts of certain men, commits the Church to offering them a formation path of quality;" — Congregation for the Clergy, The Gift of the Priestly Vocation — Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis, introduction no. 1, 8 December 2016^[43]

Article 114 § 3 of Praedicate Evangelium explicitly entrusts the Dicastery with promoting this Ratio as well as its counterpart for permanent deacons, the Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Diaconorum Permanentium, and every document concerning the ongoing formation of already ordained clergy^[44]. The same article gives the Dicastery the power to confirm the national Ratios drawn up by each episcopal conference, and to encourage the erection of interdiocesan seminaries where a single diocese cannot guarantee a sufficient number of candidates, formators and quality spiritual directors^[45].

The permanent diaconate, a vocation in its own right

Restored in 1967 on the basis of Lumen Gentium, the permanent diaconate occupies a statistically considerable place within the Dicastery's field: according to 2025 data from the Fides Agency, the Catholic Church has 51,433 permanent deacons worldwide, including 50,868 diocesan deacons — almost all attached to this same Dicastery — a figure that rose by 1,283 in a single year, bucking the trend observed among priests^[46]. This growth, particularly marked in America (+1,268 diocesan deacons) and Oceania, contrasts sharply with the continuing decline in the number of secular priests, and makes the permanent diaconate one of the most dynamic ministries in the contemporary Church.

Source: Fides Agency, dossier "Catholic Church Statistics 2025", published for the XCIXth World Mission Sunday (19 October 2025), data from the Statistical Yearbook of the Church as of 31 December 2023^[47].

This table gives the exact measure of the population directly under the Dicastery's charge: some 330,000 secular clerics — diocesan priests and deacons combined — spread across the five continents, with opposite trajectories between Europe, in sharp decline (-1,690 diocesan priests in one year), and Africa and Asia, in continued growth (+1,221 and +542 diocesan priests respectively).

The Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests

Since its 2013 revision, the Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests remains the reference text for the daily exercise of the diocesan priesthood: priestly spirituality, celibacy, obedience, obligatory ongoing formation, exercise of the pastoral office, relations with the diocesan bishop and the presbyteral council. In practical terms, it completes the theological teaching of Presbyterorum Ordinis and Pastores Dabo Vobis.

Presbyteral councils and diocesan structures

Article 118 § 1 of Praedicate Evangelium places under the Dicastery's administrative competence the general discipline of a set of diocesan structures directly linked to the life of the clergy: the diocesan finance council, the presbyteral council, the college of consultors, the chapter of canons, the diocesan pastoral council, as well as parishes and churches^[48]. The presbyteral council, instituted by the Second Vatican Council as a mandatory consultative body bringing together the bishop and elected representatives of his clergy, is its most visible expression: through it, the diocesan presbyterium — all the priests of a diocese gathered around their bishop — finds a permanent institutional expression.

Clerical associations and incardination

Article 118 § 2 also entrusts the Dicastery with oversight of associations of clerics and clerical public associations, to which it may, after consulting the competent dicasteries and with pontifical approval, grant the faculty to incardinate priests — that is, to attach them canonically to a structure other than a territorial diocese, as is the case for certain personal prelatures or societies of apostolic life^[49]. Article 117 specifies separately that everything concerning personal prelatures falling under the Holy See is handled by this same Dicastery^[50].

The shortage of priests, a concern written into law

Rarely for an apostolic constitution, Praedicate Evangelium devotes an entire paragraph to the demographic problem of the clergy:

"It studies, with the help of the competent Dicasteries, problems resulting from the shortage of priests in various parts of the world, which on the one hand deprives the people of God from the possibility of participating in the Eucharist and on the other weakens the sacramental structure of the Church. It therefore encourages Bishops and Episcopal Conferences to provide for a more adequate distribution of clergy." — Pope Francis, Praedicate Evangelium, art. 115 § 3^[51]

This wording explicitly recognises that the shortage of priests is not merely a matter of administrative management, but affects the very sacramental structure of the Church, depriving entire communities of regular access to the Eucharist. Interviewed by Vatican News, the Cardinal Prefect Lazzaro You Heung-sik expressed, in June 2025, his concern at the decline in priestly vocations observed "in almost every country", while firmly defending the retention of priestly celibacy and rejecting the idea that the ordination of married men could be an answer to this crisis^[52].

Article 119 entrusts the Dicastery with questions concerning the ordering of ecclesiastical goods, in particular their proper administration, as well as the granting of the licences and authorisations needed for their management — subject to the proper competences of the dicasteries for Evangelization, for the Eastern Churches and for Institutes of Consecrated Life in their respective territories or institutions^[53]. In practice, this competence covers in particular the authorisations required by canon 1292 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law for the alienation of ecclesiastical goods above a certain value threshold, ensuring that the material patrimony of the Church — buildings, land, sacred objects — is not dispersed without adequate canonical oversight. Article 118 §§ 3–4 adds oversight of ecclesiastical archives and of the extinction of pious wills — bequests and foundations for religious works whose purpose can no longer be fulfilled^[54].

Current structure

According to the official organisational chart published on the Dicastery's website, the leadership stands as follows, as of summer 2026:^[55]

The Dicastery has a staff of some twenty collaborators and is housed in the Palazzo delle Congregazioni ai Propilei, Piazza Pio XII, a few steps from St Peter's Basilica.

Cardinal Lazzaro You Heung-sik, the first Korean prefect

Born in 1951, Bishop of Daejeon (South Korea) since 2005, Msgr Lazzaro You Heung-sik was appointed prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy by Pope Francis on 11 June 2021, replacing Italian Cardinal Beniamino Stella, prefect since 2013^[56]. Created cardinal on 27 August 2022, he became the first South Korean prelate to head one of the great dicasteries of the Roman Curia^[57]. Also a member of the dicasteries for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, for Bishops and for Evangelization, Cardinal You Heung-sik has made the fight against the vocations crisis and the psychological and spiritual support of priests the stated priorities of his mandate.

The succession of prefects since 1967

This succession of prefects — French, American, Italians, Filipino, Colombian, Brazilian and then Korean — illustrates, as with the other great dicasteries of the Curia, the resolutely universal dimension of an institution whose origin nevertheless goes back solely to the implementation of the Council of Trent in 16th-century Europe.

The ministerial priesthood according to Vatican II

No administrative reform of this Dicastery can be understood without the theological foundation given to it by the Catholic doctrine of the ministerial priesthood. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the priesthood of priests, while sharing in the one priesthood of Christ under a title distinct from the common priesthood of the faithful, communicates an objective configuration to Christ the Priest through ordination:

"The ministerial priesthood has the task not only of representing Christ - Head of the Church - before the assembly of the faithful, but also of acting in the name of the whole Church when presenting to God the prayer of the Church, and above all when offering the Eucharistic sacrifice." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1552^[58]

It is this doctrinal conviction — that the diocesan priest is not a mere ecclesiastical functionary but a man sacramentally configured to Christ for the service of the People of God — which justifies, in the eyes of the Church, the existence of a Roman institution specifically dedicated to his formation, discipline and accompaniment throughout his life. The decree Presbyterorum Ordinis stresses this point by underlining that the mission of priests, although shared with the bishop whose co-workers they are, remains an irreplaceable service in the concrete, daily building up of the Church as the Body of Christ.

Saint John Mary Vianney, patron of parish priests and model of priests

The relationship between the Dicastery and concrete priestly spirituality is symbolically embodied in the figure of Saint John Mary Vianney, the Curé of Ars (1786-1859), canonized in 1925 by Pius XI and proclaimed, as early as 1929, "patron of all parish priests throughout the world"^[59]. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his death, Pope Benedict XVI opened on 19 June 2009 — the feast of the Sacred Heart and the Day for the Sanctification of Priests — a Year for Priests ending on 19 June 2010. Benedict XVI had announced his intention to proclaim the holy Curé of Ars "patron of all the priests of the world" on that occasion, but he reconsidered that decision on the eve of the closing and the proclamation did not take place^[60]. The Congregation for the Clergy, then led by Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, coordinated for the occasion, in agreement with the diocesan bishops and religious superiors, spiritual and pastoral initiatives intended to manifest the importance of the priestly mission in the Church and in society, and published for the occasion a directory for the use of confessors and spiritual directors^[61].

The World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests

By a letter dated 25 March 1995, Pope Saint John Paul II instituted the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests, held each year on the third Friday after Pentecost, the day of the liturgical solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus^[62]. The choice of this date is no accident: it underlines the profound link between the Eucharist, of which the priest is the ordinary minister, and the pierced Heart of Christ, source of the total gift of self that the priestly vocation calls men to imitate. This annual day, promoted each year by the Dicastery for the Clergy in dioceses throughout the world, remains today one of the most visible spiritual events associated with the institution.

"May priests be worthy witnesses of the love of Christ." — Intention traditionally associated with the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests, relayed by the Fides Agency^[63]

• The Dicastery for Bishops — the Roman institution responsible for the governance and appointment of diocesan bishops, distinct from the secular clergy.
• The Dicastery for the Eastern Churches — the body competent for the clergy of the Eastern Catholic Churches, outside the remit of the Dicastery for the Clergy.
• Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith — the body exclusively competent for canonical penal cases of sexual abuse committed by clerics.
• The Dicastery for Evangelization — heir to the competence over catechesis and shrines, removed from the Congregation for the Clergy in 2013 and 2017.
• The Council of Trent (1545-1563) — the council whose disciplinary implementation prompted, as early as 1564, the founding of the Sacred Congregation of the Council.
• The Roman Curia — all the dicasteries, tribunals and offices through which the pope governs the Catholic Church.