The Common House: Communities of Consecrated Life, towards the Enhancement of Their Houses and Heritage

Abstract

This text was developed with the intention of guaranteeing a comprehensive framework for the interventions that make up this volume. Its aim is to foster a critical orientation on the conditions, policies and institutions involved in the management of cultural heritage for religious communities, specifically in regard to the closure and dismissal of convents and houses of common spiritual life. This contribution considers the phenomenon of closures according to a holistic approach, presen- ting its different aspects and points of view: from that of the external intellectual observer to that in the internal religious community member. The cultural heritage’s fate is described as a part of a wider complex phenomenon that involves religious communities, and the civil one, with repercussions on the patrimonial, ecclesial, juridical, and even psychological level of its members. To consider all these arguments, the essay presents a tripartite development. Its first part illustrates the specific characteristics of the cultural heritage of religious communities, taking into particular consideration the interdependence between communities and goods, the relationship between movable and immovable properties, the relationship between tradition and conservation, in the evolution of the ecclesial and canonical concept of cultural heritage. The second paragraph offers a series of statistical data on the presence of consecrated men and women and their homes in Italy, Europe and the rest of the world, with variation rates referring to the last 30 years, assuming as a source the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae. Despite the absence of census data regarding new communities of consecrated life, some considerations are also offered with respect to their presence. In the third part, the institutional subjects who accompany the communities of consecrated life in the paths of disposal and alienation of goods are presented, also underlining their absences, values and meanings that could guide programs and projects of reuse and valorization.