Former dicasteries In the Roman Curia of the Catholic Church, a congregation (Latin: Sacræ Cardinalium Congregationes) was a type of department.
Certain curial departments have been organized by the Holy See at various times to assist it in the transaction of those affairs which canonical discipline and the individual interests of the faithful bring to Rome.
Among the most important were the Roman Congregations, traditionally comprising cardinals who assist the pope in the administration of the affairs of the Church.
This work, at first entrusted to the papal chaplains, was afterwards divided between the penitentiarii and the auditores, according as questions of the internal or the external forum (i.e., jurisdiction) were to be considered.
[2] Pope Sixtus V was the first to distribute this administrative business among different congregations of cardinals; and in his Apostolic Constitution Immensa Aeterni Dei (22 January 1588) he generalized the idea, already conceived and partly reduced to practice by some of his predecessors, of committing one or another case or a group of cases to the examination, or to the decision, of several cardinals.
[3] Immensa Aeterni Dei has since been superseded, most recently by Pope John Paul II's constitution Pastor Bonus.
Wherefore, it is forbidden for an officer of one of the congregations to serve in any way as an agent, or as a procurator or advocate, in his own department or in any other ecclesiastical tribunal.
[3] Following the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI implemented many of the changes called for in the Curia with his Constitution Regimini Ecclesiae Universae of 15 August 1967.
One of the main changes brought about by Paul VI was the admission of diocesan bishops and archbishops as members of the Congregations, which has previously been restricted to cardinals.
The most recent reorganization of the Roman Congregations came with Pope John Paul II's Constitution Pastor Bonus, issued June 28, 1988.
Pastor Bonus also continued Paul's expansion of the membership of congregations, allowing priests, deacons, the religious and the laity to be members of certain congregations and establishing consultors, experts appointed to the dicasteries of the Roman Curia to provide opinions, either singly or collectively, for particular issues when required.