A religious corporation is a type of religious non-profit organization, which has been incorporated under the law. Often these types of corporations are recognized under the law on a subnational level, for instance by a state or province government. The government agency responsible for regulating such corporations is usually the official holder of records, for instance, the Secretary of State. In the United States, religious corporations are formed like all other nonprofit corporations by filing articles of incorporation with the state. Religious corporation articles need to have the standard tax-exempt language the IRS requires. Religious corporations are permitted to designate a person to act in the capacity of corporation sole. This is a person who acts as the official holder of the title on the property, etc. There are four different forms of religious corporations with regard to their laws and the way they function within government. The four classes are “the aggregate corporation, the trustee corporation, the modern form of the corporation sole, and the Roman Catholic Church. United States In the United States, religious corporations are subject to less rigorous state and federal filing and reporting requirements than other tax-exempt organizations, such as mutual benefit nonprofit corporations, or public benefit nonprofit corporations. Depending on the state in which they are located, they may also be exempt from some of the inspections or regulations governing non-religious groups performing the same services. The laws of the different states disclose the fact that, notwithstanding the diversity of statutory provisions concerning charitable and religious corporations, there is such a degree of uniformity as to suggest the corporations in different states have diverse statutory provisions. Roman Catholic Church The Roman Catholic Church is recognized as a corporation by virtue of the treaty of 1898 in Spain, while other religious corporations derive their status from their charters granted to them by the state. All religious, private, and civil corporations are created for the purpose of conducting the temporal affairs of their affiliated church. The church by the nature of its organization may be entirely independent of other clerical associations; or maybe a subordinate part of some general corporation or denomination in which there are superior ministerial tribunals, with the general and ultimate power of judicature over the whole membership of the general organization. Accordingly, the General Conference of 1872, in pursuance of a resolution offered, after consultation, and subsequently approved by the Committee on