What is the basis for the Catholic Church saying it’s not a legal entity?

In law, we have a concept called legal entities. These normally are individual humans (each of us is a legal entity) and corporations and some unincorporated associations like formal partnerships.

While almost every association of individuals has chosen to incorporate, the Catholic Church as a whole or on a national level has chosen not to (with some relatively rare exceptions for some of its sub-components).

Instead, the Catholic Church relies on a bizarre and thoroughly outdated common law concept called the “corporation sole”. I do not know of any other example of a corporation sole. I don’t believe any law school teaches about a corporation sole. It is as though we have a completely unique, secret legal system that benefits only the Catholic Church. That contravenes separation of church and state.

The Catholic Church uses the corporation sole this way: any individual who holds the title of Bishop in the Roman Catholic Church is a corporation; a corporation sole. When one Bishop is replaced by another, the new Bishop becomes the corporation sole; no paperwork required. The Bishop-corporation owns whatever property the Bishop’s specific parish/diocese owns except that the Bishop is both a private individual and a corporation sole at the same time. The Bishop as private individual can own his own private property that does not belong to corporation sole.

By moving property around the various Catholic Church entities they can always limit the amount of money/property in any one diocese that appears likely to be sued.

The Catholic Church as a whole pretends that it is nothing more than a bunch of random individuals who just happen to share the same ideas. There is no central entity just a vast network of corporation soles. Of course this is a blatant lie: only the Pope can hire and fire and re-assign Bishops, only the Pope can declare what Church policy is.

In law, we have a concept called piercing the corporate veil. Often one corporation will create one or more smaller corporations. If the small corporation does wrong, sometimes the law will pierce the corporate veil separating the two corporate entities and make the bigger corporation liable for the actions of the small corporation. Sometimes this is done when there is an individual purporting to be outside the corporation but is really the driving mind behind the corporation.

I believe that the concept of the corporation sole needs to be abolished and that our courts can and should pierce the corporate veil between the Bishop and his employer, the Roman Catholic Church as a whole, either at a national or international level.

I believe our law schools should be teaching this unique evasion of liability through corporation sole. I believe every discussion of sharia law needs to include a discussion of how our law allows the Catholic Church to stand outside our legal system.

I sincerely invite any lawyer to correct me in any of the above. I would love to find out if Canada has an expert in the law of corporation sole.

I write about all the court cases I could find that discussed these issues in a civil liability context between 1990 and 2005 in my paper: McMahon, Thomas, The Horrors of Canada's Tort Law System: The Indian Residential School Civil Cases (June 9, 2017). Available at SSRN: