A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court has held that Christian priests and nuns have inheritance rights over their ancestral property as they are governed by the Indian Succession Act.
“The Indian Succession Act, 1925 does not make any departure in the matter of inheritance or succession to a Christian priest or nun whether or not he/she has taken a vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience,” the Bench observed.
The court made the ruling while allowing an appeal against a subordinate court verdict rejecting a plea of a Catholic priest in Kochi for a declaration that he was entitled to a portion of his ancestral property. The lower court had dismissed his plea on the ground that he was a priest.
‘Civil death’
“That one would suffer civil death and be deprived of his property on entering into the Holy Order would be a naked infringement of Article 300 A of the Constitution (right to property),” the Bench observed.
The court made it clear that the High Court’s earlier ruling that priests/nuns suffered “a civil death” on joining monastery was no longer good law in the case of civil rights.
They could not be denied property rights on the ground that they became priests or nuns.
“The canon law is after all a body of principles, standards, rules or norms internal to the church distinguished from the civil law. The canon law can no longer be treated as customary law after its codification by the Vatican Council in the year 1918…. It will be preposterous, therefore, to decide the civil rights of the parties based on the canon law,” the court observed.
The Bench, however, said a property obtained by a Hindu ascetic or a Christian priest on behalf of a math or a monastery stood on a different footing and the same would devolve on the successor administrator.
