Acts of Incorporation

Case: Ponce v. Roman Catholic Church in Puerto Rico, 210 U.S. 296 (1908)

Case synopsis: Following the United States’ takeover of Puerto Rico after the Spanish-American War in 1898, questions arose as to the ownership of Roman Catholic Church properties and the juridical personality of the Church. These questions were taken up in a number of legal disputes, including Ponce v. Roman Catholic Church in Puerto Rico, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1908. Ponce confirmed the juridical personality of the Catholic Church and its ownership of certain church properties in the city of Ponce.

The church property disputes at the dawn of the twentieth century in colonial Puerto Rico illustrate how the translation and partial inheritance of legal arrangements across different colonial regimes coded and privileged a particular legal option as the new status quo even under disestablishment.

This case originates in the work of David Maldonado Rivera.

Sources

1899 Carroll Report on Porto Rico

Carroll, Henry. 1899. ‘The Church and Church Property’. In Report on the Island of Porto Rico, 651–90. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

The Roman Catholic Church of Porto Rico vs. the People of Porto Rico (1906)

Municipality of Ponce v. Roman Catholic Church in Porto Rico (1908)

"La Mariposa" / "The Butterfly"

Editorial of La Correspondencia published on July 31, 1908

"Veni, Vidi, Vici"

From El Defensor Cristiano, year VI, num. 112, September 1, 1908.

Analyses

A Perfect, Irrevocable Gift

Maldonado Rivera, David. 2021. ‘A Perfect, Irrevocable Gift”: Recognizing the Proprietary Church in Puerto Rico 1898–1908’. In At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion, edited by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, 37–50. New York: Columbia University Press.