Limitation of the Right to Request the Erasure of Personal Data in the Context of Sacramental Matters and Canonical Status in the Catholic Church in Poland

The introduction of new rules for the protection of personal data in European law has caused increased interest in the issue of respecting the rights of persons resulting from the European regulation. Among these rights are the right to request erasure of personal data and/or the right to be forgotten. Due to the specificity of churches and religious communities, the European legislator also takes into account their autonomy in terms of the possibility of applying their own detailed rules for the protection of personal data. Therefore, the Catholic Church in Poland has adapted her data protection law to the European regulation so that she can continue to carry out her mission in the modern world while retaining the possibility of applying the law on the protection of personal data, taking into consideration the Catholic doctrine regarding the sacraments and the canonical status of the faithful who belong or belonged to her. In these two aspects, the right to delete data is not vested in the faithful but is only recognized as a request for confidentiality of data that cannot be used without the consent of the competent church authority.