Council of Trent, 1545-1563

779. 39. The souls in purgatory sin without intermission, as long as they seek rest and abhor punishments.

780. 40. The souls freed from purgatory by the suffrages of the living are less happy than if they had made satisfactions by themselves.

781. 41. Ecclesiastical prelates and secular princes would not act badly if they destroyed all of the money-bags of beggary.

Censure of the Holy Pontiff: "All and each of the above mentioned articles or errors, so to speak, as set before you, we condemn, disapprove, and entirely reject as respectively heretical, or scandalous, or false, or offensive to pious ears, or seductive of simple minds, and in opposition to Catholic truth.

HADRIAN VI 1522-1523 CLEMENT VII 1523-1534

PAUL III 1534-1549

COUNCIL OF TRENT 1545-1563

Ecumenical XIX (Contra Novatores 16 cent.)

Session III (Feb. 4, 1546)

The Creed of the Catholic Faith is Accepted¹

782. This sacred and holy ecumenical and general Synod of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Spirit, with the three legates of the Apostolic See presiding over it, in consideration of the magnitude of the matters to be transacted, especially those which are comprised under these two heads, the extirpation of heresies and the reform of morals, because of which chiefly the Synod was convoked . . . , has proposed that the creed of faith, which the Holy Roman Church utilizes, inasmuch as it is that principle, wherein all who profess the faith of Christ necessarily agree, and is the firm and sole foundation, against which the "gates of Hell shall never prevail" [Matt. 16:18], be expressed in the very same words in which it is read in all the churches. This creed is as follows:

[The Nicean-Constantinopolitan Creed follows, see n. 86.]