Ecclesial Reuse of Decommissioned Churches: Historical and Critical Issues in the Recent Document by the Pontifical Council for Culture (2018)

The topic of decommissioning and reuse of redundant or underused churches involves both the scientific debate and the ecclesial communities. For the first time ever, the Vatican institution dedicated to cultural heritage has promoted an investigation among episcopal conferences in Europe, North America and Australia, in order to formulate common guidelines concerning reuse of decommissioned churches. A final document was discussed and approved by the official delegations of 23 episcopal conferences, and published by cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi 17th December 2018. This paper underlines certain aspects of the document, in particular: the relationship between identity and adaptivity of historic buildings; the role of historical investigations in defining transformation possibilities of decommissioned churches; the resilience of religious heritage; the involvement of local communities and new heritage communities in heritagization and reuse processes; and the need for regional planning in the definition of strategies shared between the ecclesial communities and civil society.