alt Hacker News> baptismal parish is the official keeper of your sacramental records
Interesting fact that I (as a Catholic) was not aware of, though I've observed it happening in practice when preparing to marry my wife, who did get all the relevant records from her home parish in a different part of Austria from where we were living at the time.
I'm curious about two things though, if you happen to know them: first is this "offical keeper" thing a Church-wide policy in all countries, not just a de facto tradition in some, and if so is it stated anywhere e.g. in Canon law as a universal practice? Secondly, how does the policy apply to those who were baptized in a non-Catholic church and later converted? Obviously an Anglican (or whatever) parish isn't going to take on the duty of being the official record-keeper for any Catholic sacramental requirements.
For a long time this was a common concept: that more central authorities should only come in where more local cannot effectively do it (subsidiarity). This was of course pretty universal until recently. The oldest counter-example I can think of is the French Revolution that started to centralise.
The church works like DNS in that regard. (Without the caching. ;)
While it was always decentralised, the standardisation of the documents was with the Council of Trent ~1550 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Trent