Two religious orders

The most instructive property arrangement on this site, because the answer depends on what kind of institution is asking — and the split is deliberate rather than accidental. Houses and churches accepted to aid souls may not hold fixed revenue at all: it is "not licit to have any fixed revenue, even for the sacristy or building or anything else, in such a manner that any administration of this revenue is in the control of the Society," and the professed are to live on alms in the houses. A founder may leave an endowment for a building's maintenance without offending against poverty, provided the revenue "is not at the disposition of the Society and the Society is not in charge of it." Colleges are treated on the opposite principle. They may hold and administer fixed revenue, and the Constitutions provide for its administration and preservation — while forbidding the professed living in houses to draw on college revenues for their own support. The Complementary Norms carry the distinction forward in modern terms: apostolic communities and churches follow the rules laid down for houses, while apostolic institutes follow those for colleges, with seminaries and infirmaries for the order's own sick and elderly keeping their own principles. So a Jesuit university may hold an endowment while the Jesuit community living beside it may not hold fixed revenue of its own. Anyone asking who owns Catholic institutional wealth in the United States needs that distinction before the question can even be posed properly.

• governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part VI ch. 2 [555-557], with notes [556] and [558]
• governing document Complementary Norms 191, distinguishing apostolic communities and churches from apostolic institutes

The friars do not own the buildings they use, and this is a principle rather than an accident of circumstance. Article 73 is one sentence: "The ownership of buildings and goods that the friars need for their lives and work is to remain in reality under the control of those whom the friars serve — benefactors, Church or the Holy See." Set that beside the Society of Jesus, whose colleges may hold and administer fixed revenue in their own right, and the claim that "religious order" describes a single arrangement collapses. Both are Catholic institutes under the same canons. One holds endowments; the other arranges that title to what it occupies rests with somebody else, and keeps only the use. The site's enum needed a new value to say this. Every other body profiled here owns what it occupies, holds it in trust for a larger body, or is itself the larger body. This one is the only case of a body that deliberately declines ownership of its own premises — and calling that "mixed" would have implied variation by place, when it is a settled rule.

• governing document General Constitutions OFM (2021), Article 73
• governing document General Constitutions OFM (2021), Article 8 §1 — after solemn profession friars renounce the right of ownership

Members are missioned by superiors, and no congregation calls anyone. The order also carries an obligation that has no counterpart anywhere else on this site: a fourth vow, taken by the professed, of obedience to the pope with regard to missions. The Constitutions are careful about its scope — "the entire purport of this fourth vow of obedience to the pope was and is with regard to missions" — so it concerns being sent, not general submission, and the Complementary Norms carry it forward as a standing readiness to be sent anywhere. In practice this means a Jesuit may be assigned by his own superiors or sent by the pope, and neither route involves the community he leaves or the one he joins.

• governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part VII ch. 1, with note [529] C on the scope of the fourth vow
• governing document Complementary Norms 304 §1, on the spirit of the fourth vow

Friars are assigned by their ministers, and no congregation calls anyone. Where the order staffs a diocesan parish, the canonical route is the same as for any institute: the bishop entrusts the parish by written agreement with the superior's consent, the superior presents, and the bishop appoints.

• governing document Code of Canon Law (1983), c. 520 §§1-2 (accessed 2026-07-31)
• governing document General Constitutions OFM (2021), Article 8 §1, on obedience to ministers and guardians

The order, in every sense the field asks about — it admits, forms, assigns, maintains, receives what the member earns, and may dismiss him. The relationship is profession rather than employment, and where a Jesuit works for an institution the order does not own, that institution is not his employer in any sense that would let it hire or keep him.

• governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part V [512] and Part II
• governing document Code of Canon Law (1983), c. 668 §3 (accessed 2026-07-31)

The order, which admits, assigns, maintains and disciplines. The relationship is profession rather than employment, and a friar has by vow renounced the capacity to contract about his own goods without permission.

• governing document General Constitutions OFM (2021), Article 8 §1

A Superior General elected for life, and the Constitutions argue the case rather than merely asserting it. Given a choice between a fixed term and a whole life, "his election will be for life and not for a fixed period," on the grounds that experience in government, knowledge of the individual members, and established authority among them all aid the office. The accompanying notes add three further reasons: that ambition, "the pestilence of such offices," is banished further than under periodic election; that it is easier to find one capable person than many; and that the practice follows the more important offices of the day, held for life by popes, bishops, princes and lords. The text then does something the other bodies on this site rarely do — it names the objection to its own arrangement. "Certain disadvantages which could ensue from holding such a charge for life" are acknowledged, and a remedy is provided in a dedicated chapter on the authority the Society retains over its own General, with the Complementary Norms later providing for his resignation and for substitution in cases of grave and perpetual incapacity. Below the General, authority descends by delegation rather than ascending by election: provincials hold what the General communicates to them. This is therefore the most centralised arrangement on the site after the Roman Catholic diocesan structure, and it differs from that one in the crucial respect that the head is chosen by the body he governs.

• governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part IX ch. 1 [719] with notes [720-722]
• governing document Complementary Norms 362 and 366, on resignation of a General and substitution for grave and perpetual incapacity
• governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part IX ch. 4, on the Society's provident care regarding the General

A Minister General elected by the General Chapter for a six-year term, re-electable "only for another six years without an intervening vacancy" — so twelve years and then a required break, with the same pattern applied to other ministers. This is the sharpest available contrast with the Society of Jesus, whose constitutions argue at length that the head should serve for life, and it shows how little the shared label "religious institute" settles. Two Catholic orders under the same canons choose opposite answers to how long their head should hold office, and each gives reasons. Where the Jesuit text worries that periodic election breeds ambition, the Franciscan arrangement assumes rotation and builds its legislative cycle around it: a chapter every six years, electing for six years. The vocabulary reinforces it. The head is a *minister* and a local superior a *guardian*, and the constitutions place both inside a doctrine of minority rather than of prelacy.

• governing document General Constitutions OFM (2021), Article 196 — the Minister General elected in General Chapter for six years, re-electable once without an intervening vacancy
• governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part IX ch. 1 [719], for the contrast

There is no congregational exit because no congregation belongs; the field is answering a question this body does not pose, and the value should be read as "not applicable." Departure of individual members is governed by the Constitutions' Part II and by canon law, neither of which was read on that point for this profile.

• governing document The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, Part II, chs. 1-4

No congregational exit exists because no congregation belongs; the value should be read as "not applicable." Departure of individual friars is governed by provisions not read for this profile.

• governing document General Constitutions OFM (2021), Articles 74-75, on the property consequences of profession