CURATO. – The term (from the Latin curatus) generally denotes a priest holding a sacred office involving the care of souls. It appears in the Middle Ages (long before parochus), as the distinction between the official clergy and the free clergy gradually became established, as a synonym for the terms then current: sacerdos parochianus, presbyter parochialis, sacerdos proprius, rector, designating the priest (parish priest) to whom the care of souls in a baptismalis church is entrusted ex officio, in contrast especially with the presbyter conductitus. Used at first as an attribute, it later became a substantive (chap. 2, III, 7, in Clem.). From the end of the Middle Ages its use became fairly common in France (cf. G. Gerson, d. in 1429, De statu curatorum) and in some regions of north-western Italy, where the parish priest is still so called.
In a narrower sense, curatus also designated in the Middle Ages the priest who exercised the actual care of souls with vicariate power, subordinately to the presbyter principalis or primitivus, who was its habitual holder with proper power; this system, subsequently abolished as an abuse, still has a partial reflection in the figure of the vicario c. (v. VACARIO).
At present, c. (or autonomous vicar) generally denotes the priest who exercises the care of souls in a curacy or autonomous vicariate, that is, in a place (hospital, prison, etc.) or in a determined territory, with its own church, within the boundaries of the parish, which, although not a parish, is wholly or partly withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the parish priest (cf. can. 464 § 2).
In some regions the coadjutor or assistant vicar is also called c.
The official terminology of the CIC uses the term curatus only as an attribute proper to the vicario c. (cf. above), and as a designation of the entity to which the care of souls is attached (beneficio c., capitolo c.; cf. cann. 1411 n. 5, 1430 § 1 402).