DESSERVANTS. - A designation peculiar exclusively to French ecclesiastical law, having no counterpart in official canonical terminology.
In pre-Napoleonic law it was rather rarely used and denoted sometimes the assistant pastor in the sense of can. 471, sometimes the assistant pastor of a portion of a parish dependent upon the parish priest, and at times, more specifically, the administrator mentioned in cann. 472–73.
It became commonly used with the Napoleonic Concordat to designate the priests entrusted with the care of souls in the parish succursales created by that Concordat.
The law of 8 April 1802, better known as the Articles organiques, for contingent purposes of political and administrative control, had restricted the concept and prerogatives of parish priest to those alone who held the care of souls in district capitals. The other pastoral districts comprised within the same district, while remaining true parishes in the canonical sense, were designated as succursales, in the manner of assistant vicariates; and their incumbents, being made removable ad natura Episcopi and reduced to the rank of assistant pastors dependent on the parish priest of the capital, were called d. o succursalistes.
At present, d. are practically equivalent to parish priests (art. 30 of the decree Maxima cura of 20 Aug. 1910, of the Sacred Congregation of the Consistory). Their sole distinguishing feature, apart from the name, is removability at the discretion of their own Ordinary.