Chapter II: Notaries
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1. A chancellor is to be appointed whose principal function, unless particular law establishes otherwise, is to take care that acts of the administration are gathered, arranged, and safeguarded in the archive of the administration.
2. If it seems necessary, the chancellor can be given an assistant whose title is to be vice-chancellor.
3. By reason of being chancellor and vice-chancellor they are notaries and secretaries of the administration.
4. Besides the chancellor, other notaries can be appointed whose writing or signature establishes authenticity for any acts, for judicial acts only, or for acts of a certain case or affair only.
5. It is the duty of notaries: a. to draw up the acts and instruments regarding decrees, dispositions, obligations, or other things which require their action; b. to record faithfully in writing what has taken place and to sign it with a notation of the place, day, month, and year; c. having observed what is required, to furnish acts or instruments to one who legitimately requests them from the records and to declare copies of them to be in conformity with the original.
6. All documents which regard the ministry must be protected with the greatest care. a. In every ministry's administration there is to be erected in a safe place a ministerial archive, or record storage area, in which instruments and written documents which pertain to the spiritual and temporal affairs of the ministry are to be safeguarded after being properly filled and diligently secured. b. An inventory, or catalog, of the documents which are contained in the archive is to be kept with a brief synopsis of each written document.
- The archive must be locked and only the minister and chancellor are to have its key. No one is permitted to enter except with the permission either of the minister or of both the moderator of the archives and the chancellor. Interested parties have the right to obtain personally or through a proxy an authentic written copy or photocopy of documents which by their nature are public and which pertain to their personal status.
- It is not permitted to remove documents from the archive except for a brief time only and with the consent either of the minister or of both the moderator of the archives and the chancellor.
- A minister is also to take care that there is a historical archive in the ministry and that documents having historical value are diligently protected and systematically ordered in it.