In various ways a person may be designated to fill a vacant benefice: by election, postulation, presentation, or recommendation, resignation made in one's favour, or approved exchange.
In all cases confirmation by the proper ecclesiastical superior of the selection made is required, while letters of appointment, as a rule, must be presented.
Reception of administration by a chapter without such letters brings excommunication reserved to the pope, together with privation of the fruits of the benefice; and the nominee loses ipso facto all right to the prelacy.
Installation, called corporal or real institution, is the induction into the actual possession of a benefice.
Corporal institution, according to common law, belongs to the archdeacon; by custom to the bishop or his vicar-general.