PIUS [V], BISHOP, SERVANT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD
FOR A PERPETUAL MEMORIAL OF THE MATTER
That abhorrent crime, by which the polluted federated [Papal] States burn by God's fearful judgment, enflames the bitterest sorrow in Us, and gravely moves Our soul, so that we give Our attentions to repress it as much as possible.
1. It was properly recognized by the Lateran Council that whatever Clerics will have been discovered to suffer from that incontinence which is against nature, because of which the wrath of God falls upon the sons of disobedience, are to be ejected from the clergy, or be forced to do penance in a Monastery.
2. But lest the contagion of go great a scourge, from the hope of impunity, which is the greatest lure of sinning, more confidently grow, We determine that clerics guilty of this ghastly crime are to be quite gravely punished, in order that with certainty the avenging sword of the civil laws deter those who do not abhor the ruin of the soul.
3. Therefore, because We have made a decree on this matter at the very beginning of Our Pontificate, now intending to follow up more fully and more boldly, We deprive all priests whoever, and all secular Clerics, and regular Clerics of whatsoever grade and dignity, participating in such a dire crime, of every clerical privilege, and every office, dignity, and Ecclesiastical benefice, by the authority of this Canon: that thus when they are degraded by the Ecclesiastical Judge, they be handed over immediately to the secular power, who shall exact from them that same penalty which is found enacted by licit sanctions upon laymen having fallen to this ruin. to have been constituted by legitimate sanctions against laymen who have slid down into this ruin. Nothing to the contrary withstanding, etc.
Given at Rome at St. Peter's, 30 August in the Year of the Lord's Incarnation 1568, in the third year of Our Pontificate.