| Apostolicae curae Latin for 'With Apostolic care' Apostolic letter of Pope Leo XIII | |
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| Signature date | 13 September 1896 |
| Subject | Anglican orders are confirmed to be invalid |
| Text | |
| AAS | 29 (1896-97): 193-203 |
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Apostolicae curae is the title of an apostolic letter, issued in 1896 by Pope Leo XIII, declaring all Anglican ordinations to be "absolutely null and utterly void". The Anglican Communion made no official reply, but the archbishops of Canterbury and York of the Church of England published a response known by its Latin title Saepius officio in 1897.
Leo XIII deemed Anglican ordinations invalid because he found the Anglican Edwardine Ordinals deficient in intention and form. He declared that the rites expressed an intention to create a priesthood different from the sacrificing priesthood of the Catholic Church and to reduce ordination to a mere ecclesiastical institution instead of a sacramental conferral of actual grace by the action itself, thereby invalidating any sacramental holy orders. He raised similar objection to the Anglican rite for the consecration of bishops, thus dismissing the entire subject of the apostolic succession of Anglican priests and bishops from validly ordained 16th-century bishops.
The view of many Anglican bishops and defenders was that the required references to the sacrificial priesthood at the heart of the Roman argument never existed in many of the ancient Latin liturgical rites' ordination liturgies, or in certain Eastern Catholic ordination liturgies that the Catholic Church considered to be valid. In the Catholic view, the differences between these rites are a matter of tradition or custom, and indicate no intention to exclude a sacrificing priesthood.