New York Consolidated Laws, Religious Corporations Law - RCO § 3. Filing and recording certificates of incorporation of religious corporations

The certificate of incorporation of a religious corporation shall be acknowledged or proved before an officer authorized to take the acknowledgment or proof of deeds or conveyances of real estate, to be recorded in the county in which the principal office or place of worship of said corporation is or is intended to be situated, and shall be filed and recorded in the office of the clerk of said county.  If there is not, or is not intended to be, any such office or place of worship, the certificate shall be filed and recorded in the office of the secretary of state.  Where a religious corporation removes to another county within the state a duplicate copy of its certificate of incorporation together with a statement of such removal duly signed and acknowledged by the directors and officers of said corporation may be filed in the office of the clerk of said county to which it has removed.

The recording of any certificate of a religious corporation organized under provisions of “An act to provide for the incorporation of religious societies,” passed April fifth, eighteen hundred and thirteen, and of the acts amending the same, in the office of a clerk of a county prior to the passage of chapter thirty-five of the laws of eighteen hundred and ninety-seven, instead of in the office of the register of such county, shall be regarded and construed and such recording is hereby declared to be of the same validity, force and effect as would have been the recording of such certificate in the proper office.  And every act, deed, matter and thing done or performed by every such religious society or corporation since the recording of its certificate in the office of said county clerk is hereby ratified, confirmed and declared to be as valid in all respects as if the said certificate had been properly and appropriately recorded in the office of the register of the county in which said religious society or corporation was organized;  but this section shall not affect any suit or proceeding already commenced arising out of such original mistake.