Desservants

DESSERVANTS. - A designation exclusively proper to French ecclesiastical law, which finds no counterpart in official canonical terminology.

In the law prior to Napoleon it was of rather rare use and denoted now the vicar curate in the sense of can. 471, now the vicar curate of a portion of a parish dependent on the parish priest, sometimes, more specifically, the vicar economus referred to in cann. 472-73.

It became of common use with the Napoleonic Concordat to denote the priests entrusted with the care of souls in the succursales of parishes created by the Concordat itself.

The law of 8 April 1802, better known under the name of Articles organiques, for contingent purposes of political and administrative control, had restricted the concept and the prerogatives of parish priest to the sole holders of the care of souls in district capitals. The other circumscriptions of care contained within the district itself, while remaining true parishes in the canonical sense, were qualified as succursales, in the manner of vicariates curate, and their holders, made removable ad nutum Episcopi and reduced to the rank of vicars curate dependent on the parish priest of the capital, were called d. or succursalistes.

At present the d. are practically equated with parish priests (art. 30 of the decr. Maxima cura of 20 Aug. 1910, of the Sacred Congregation Consistorial). The only distinguishing note, besides the name, is removability at the discretion of one's own Ordinary.