CURATE. - The term (from the Latin curatus) generally denotes a priest holding a sacred office having the care of souls. It appears in the Middle Ages (well before parochus), as the distinction between official clergy and free clergy became established, as a synonym for the terms then current — sacerdos parochianus, presbyter parochialis, sacerdos proprius, rector — to denote the priest (parish priest) to whom the care of souls in a baptismalis church is entrusted ex officio, in contrast especially to the presbyter conductitus. Used at first as an attribute, it later became a noun (cap. 2, III, 7, in Clem.). From the end of the Middle Ages its use became fairly common in France (cf. G. Gerson, d. 1429, De statu curatorum) and in some regions of northwestern Italy, where the parish priest is still so designated.
In a narrower sense, curatus also denoted in the Middle Ages the priest who exercised the actual care of souls with vicarious power, subordinate to the presbyter principalis or primitivus, who was its habitual titular with proper power; this system, later abolished as an abuse, still retains a partial reflection in the figure of the curate vicar (v. VICAR).
Now the prevailing usage is to call curate (or autonomous vicar) the priest who exercises the care of souls in an autonomous curacy or 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a determined territory, with its own church, within the boundaries of the parish, which, while not being a parish, is withdrawn in whole or in part from the jurisdiction of the parish priest (cf. can. 464 § 2).
In some regions the coadjutor or assistant vicar is also called curate.
The official terminology of the CIC uses the term curatus only as an attribute proper to the curate vicar (cf. above), and as a qualification of the entity to which the care of souls is annexed (curate benefice, curate chapter; cf. cann. 1411 n. 5, 1430 § 1, 402).
Bibliography3 works
Zaccaria da San Mauro