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BELOVED SONS AND DAUGHTERS,
HEALTH AND APOSTOLIC BENEDICTION:
AMONG OTHER THINGS
committed to our charge and government, those in a special way make us
solicitous by which the concupiscences of the world and the flesh being
restrained, the quiet state of innocence and first peace given us from heaven
may be brought back to its primeval perfection.
Long since, indeed, for this
reason, Pope Nicholas IV, our predecessor, confirmed and approved the
Third Rule of St. Francis, which he termed "Of Penance," by
which the holy confessor, full of the Spirit of God, endeavoured to further the
salvation of all faithful Christians.
But whereas in course of time,
through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, not only married persons and such as
dwell in the world, for whom the aforesaid Third Rule was made by
St. Francis, but also choirs of innumerable virgins taking upon them the
three essential vows, and some also that of enclosure, by our authority, and
having built very many monasteries, not without manifold fruit and edification
to the militant Church, have subdued their necks under the yoke of the aforesaid
Third Order.
And whereas in the said Third Rule
some things accommodated to married persons are inserted, which are by no means
adapted to those who serve the Lord, according to this Third Rule, in celibacy
and virginity, and to which the pure affections of chaste minds are averse: We,
according to the will of our Lord, separating the more precious from what is of
less value, do confirm anew and approve the same Third Rule, and deliver it to
be kept by you and your successors, distinguished in the manner which follows,
and the tenor of which is: -
The Brothers or Sisters to be
received into this Order should be faithful Catholics, unsuspected of heresy,
firm in obedience to the Roman Church, not tied in marriage, free of debts,
sound in body, docile in mind, of stainless character, reconciled with their
neighbour: and of all these things, before they are received, they are
diligently to be examined by him who has faculty to admit them.
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