1 October 1991. The 23 sui iuris Churches which collectively make up the Eastern Catholic Churches have been invited by the Catholic Church to codify their own particular laws and submit them to the pope so that all canon law within Catholicism may be fully and completely codified. The Latin Church is guided by its own particular canons found in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. Congregation for the Oriental Churches The Congregation for the Oriental Churches is a dicastery of the Roman Curia and the curial congregation responsible for contact with the Eastern Catholic Churches for the sake of assisting their development, protecting their rights and also maintaining whole and entire in the one Catholic Church, alongside the liturgical, disciplinary and spiritual patrimony of the Latin Church, the heritage of the various Oriental Christian traditions. It "considers those matters, whether concerning persons or things, affecting the Catholic Oriental Churches" and was founded by the motu proprio Dei Providentis of Pope Benedict XV as the "Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Church" on 1 May 1917. Patriarchs and Major Archbishops of the Oriental Churches, and the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, are members of this Congregation by virtue of the law itself. The consultors and officials are selected in such a way that reflects as far as possible the diversity of rites. This congregation has authority over all matters which relate to the Oriental Churches referred to the Holy See (structure and organisation of the Churches; exercise of the offices of teaching, sanctifying and ruling; status, rights and obligations of persons) and the ad limina visits of Eastern bishops. This congregation's competence does not include the exclusive competence of the Congregations for the Doctrine of the Faith and for the Causes of Saints, of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Signatura, and the Rota (including what pertains to dispensations for a marriage ratum sed non consummatum. In matters which affect the Eastern as well as the Latin Churches, the Congregation operates, if the matter is important enough, in consultation with the Dicastery that has competence in the matter for the Latin Church. The Congregation pays special attention to communities of Eastern Catholic faithful who live in the territory of the Latin Church and attends to their spiritual needs by providing visitors and even their own hierarchs, so far as possible and where numbers and circumstances require, in consultation with