ABTRACT

The paper focuses on the new forms of participation of “civilly recognized religious corporations” in the no profit activities supported by the promotional discipline of the Third Sector. From the examination of the practice following the establishment of the Single National Register of the Third Sector emerges, on the one hand, a progressive distancing from the bilateral model of the “civilly recognized ecclesiastical/religious corporation” and, on the other hand, a tendency towards the establishment of civil entities controlled by ecclesiastical authority in place of the branch solution identified by the State legislator. This scenario brings the Italian legal system closer to those structures that characterize the US context, in which, as is known, the intervention of religious corporations in the non-profit sector is entrusted to so called “Church related corporations”.