REGISTRATION PRIVILEGE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND VIOLATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES IN THE LIGHT OF THE JECHR «SA OF UCIEZA AGAINST SPAIN»

Abstract

Registration of many buildings by the Catholic Church using the power conferred by Article 206 of the Mortgage Act has been a public matter. A legal modification succeed in 1998 and which allowed the Catholic Church to register places of worship and other properties that were not registered with a mere certificate issued by the diocese. The consequence of this reform was an intense registration activity by the Diocese. In this process, Catholic Church registered over 4,500 properties. After a brief review of the historical background of this legal precept, which explain its existence, we analyze the arguments on which to base a possible unconstitutionality of Article 206 of the Mortgage Act, concerning the violation of constitutional principles as secularism of the State and equality. In this sense, it is concluded that this article is liable to be declared unconstitutional because these principles collide with the privilege of the Church to matriculate property in their name with a certificate signed by the bishop himself. The last part of the paper focuses on the recent judgment of the European Court of Human Rights «SA of Ucieza against Spain», with specific relevance to the subject of our study.