Page:The Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789-1907, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.pdf/697

Rh Claims for pensions must be made within the period of one year after the promulgation of the present law, under penalty of forfeiture.

Title III.

12. The buildings which have been put at the disposition of the nation and which, in virtue of the law of 18 Germinal, Year X, serve for the public exercise of religions or the housing of their ministers (cathedrals, churches, chapels, temples, synagogues, archbishops' and bishops' palaces, presbyteries, seminaries) as well as their out-buildings and the furnishings which equipped them at the time when the said buildings were turned over to the religions, are and shall remain the properties of the state, departments and communes.

For these buildings, as for those of a date subsequent to the law of 18 Germinal, Year X, of which the state, the departments and the communes are the proprietors, including therein the faculties of protestant theology, proceedings shall be in conformity with the provisions of the following articles.

13. The buildings in use for the public exercise of religion, as well as the furnishings for their equipment, shall be left gratuitously at the disposition of the public establishments of the public establishments of religion, then to the associations called upon to replace them to which the property of these establistiments shall have been assigned by application of the provisions of title II.

The cessation of this possession, and, if there is occasion, its transfer shall be pronounced by decree, subject to recourse to the Council of State in its judicial capacity: 1st, if the beneficiary association is dissolved; 2d, if, apart from cases of superior force the religion ceases to be celebrated during more than six consecutive months; 3d, if the preservation of the building or that of the furnishings listed in virtue of the law of 1887 and of article 16 of the present law is compromised by insufficiency of maintenance, and after demand in due form of law, notified to the municipal council or, in its default, to the prefect; 5th, if the association ceases to fulfill its purpose or if the buildings are diverted from their appointed use; 5th, if it does not meet the obligations of article 6 or of the last paragraph of the present article, or the provisions relative to the historic monuments.

The secularisation of these buildings in the case provided for above, may be pronounced by decree rendered in the