A superior general or general superior is the leader or head of a religious institute in the Catholic Church and some other Christian denominations . The superior general usually holds supreme executive authority in the religious community, while the general chapter has legislative authority.
6-632: The figure of superior general first emerged in the thirteenth century with the development of the centralized government of the Mendicant Orders . The Friars Minor ( Franciscans ) organized their members under a Minister General , and the Order of Preachers ( Dominicans ) elected a Master of the Order . Due to restrictions on women religious, especially the obligation of cloister for nuns , congregations of women were not initially able to organize with their own superior general. In 1609, Mary Ward
12-561: The Second Vatican Council , women religious formed the International Union of superiors general . In canon law , the generic term supreme moderator is used instead of superior general. Many orders and congregations use their own title for the person who holds this position. Some examples, in addition to those named above, are: In many cases there is an intermediate level between the superior general and
18-425: The first ruler to institute a centralized government. All constituted governments are, to some degree, necessarily centralized, in the sense that even a federation exerts an authority or prerogative beyond that of its constituent parts. To the extent that a base unit of society – usually conceived as an individual citizen – vests authority in a larger unit, such as the state or the local community , authority
24-437: The superior of the individual monasteries or of equivalent local communities, often named the provincial superior . Centralized government A centralized government (also united government ) is one in which both executive and legislative power is concentrated centrally at the higher level as opposed to it being more distributed at various lower level governments. In a national context, centralization occurs in
30-428: The transfer of power to a typically unitary sovereign nation state . Executive and/or legislative power is then minimally delegated to unit subdivisions (state, county, municipal and other local authorities ). Menes , an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the early dynastic period , is credited by classical tradition with having united Upper and Lower Egypt , and as the founder of the first dynasty (Dynasty I), became
36-610: Was the superior general of a religious institute that imitated the Jesuit model, but the institute was not accepted by the Roman Curia . It was not until the nineteenth century that religious congregations of women were able to organize with a general superior, and the role is now very common. Mother Teresa , for example, was the superior general of the Missionaries of Charity , known by the honorific title of Mother . Following
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