PARISH VICAR. — The priest who acts in the place of the parish priest in the exercise of the cure of souls. There are five kinds of parish vicars.
The present or perpetual vicar governs a parish incorporated into a moral person; the oeconomus vicar governs a vacant parish; the substitute vicar governs the parish during the absence of the titular or during the appeal period if the titular has been removed by a sentence not yet final; the assistant vicar (adiutor) supplants a parish priest who is incapable; the assistant vicar (cooperator) aids a parish priest who needs help because of the size of the parish, the number of the faithful, or some other cause independent of the parish priest himself. These offices, except the first, are ordinarily held at the pleasure of the ordinary and are not consolidated into benefices. Exceptionally, however, there are true benefices intended for the office of cooperator vicar in the entire cure of souls, and these are conferred, like parishes, mostly by the Holy See; they are called autonomous vicariates, though the autonomy is incomplete since the incumbent does not break his dependence on the parish.
When a parish is united *pleno iure* to a college, a chapter, a monastery, or any other moral person, the latter has what is called the habitual cure, while the parish priest has only the actual cure, and for this reason he is called the present or perpetual vicar.
The distinction between these two concepts of cure, which already appears in canon law before the Council of Trent, was developed following the Tridentine decrees, which obliged bishops to put an end to the cure of souls being exercised *in solidum* by moral persons, where responsibility is diffused and not organically structured, entrusting it instead to physical persons (sess. VII, cap. 7, *de reform.*). After this, chapters entrusted parochial duties either to a member of the college or to one or more subordinate vicars, but reserved to themselves another direction which included, along with the legal and economic representation of the church, oversight of the parish priest; this came to be called the habitual cure—a potential state which translated *de iure* and *de facto* into the actual cure exercised by others. Since the dividing line between the two was not always clear, there was room for encroachments and legal doubts.
Therefore, while the 1917 Code of Canon Law left intact apostolic privileges and special conventions stipulated at the erection of the parish, it reserves to the moral entity, in addition to the right to present the holder of the actual cure, the high oversight of liturgical and administrative patrimonial matters of the parish, and grants the vicar full autonomy in the exercise of the cure of souls (can. 471 § 4). The vicar is therefore equated with the parish priest in all pastoral rights and duties; and whereas previously he might have been removable, today he is as irremovable as the parish priest himself (can. 741 § 3), except for the removability of religious vicars.
The priest appointed by the ordinary to govern a vacant parish, with the prior consent of the religious superior regarding the choice of subject if the parish is regular. The oeconomus vicar has all the spiritual rights and all the duties of the titular parish priest, but may not prejudice the rights of the parish priest or of the benefice. He is assigned, by way of stipend, a fixed share of the benefice’s income, in addition to stole fees. Upon ceasing office, he must hand over the archives and render an account of the administration’s receipts and expenditures to the new parish priest or to the succeeding oeconomus, in the presence of the dean or another priest designated by the ordinary (can. 473).
The titular parish priest or the oeconomus who is about to be absent for more than a week proposes to the ordinary the priest who is to substitute for him. Once approved, the substitute acquires full powers of the cure of souls, including matrimonial matters, unless the ordinary or the absent parish priest has imposed limitations; he is then called the substitute vicar. Should the titular be compelled by a grave and sudden cause to be absent for more than a week, the substitute immediately acquires such broad powers and retains them until the ordinary—who must be informed in writing of the absence and substitution as soon as possible—orders otherwise (can. 455 § 4-5, 474; Pontifical Commission, 14 July 1922; 20 May 1923). Substitution of a parish priest absent for less than a week falls under the ordinary rules of delegation. The vicar substituted for a parish priest removed during the appeal period is appointed directly by the ordinary and is equated in powers with the oeconomus vicar.
When the parish priest becomes wholly or partially unequal to his office due to a permanent physical cause or insufficient capacity, the bishop, if he does not deem it opportune to proceed with removal, appoints the assistant vicar (adiutor), whose juridical position varies according to the duties entrusted to him. If he is given full power to supplant the wholly incapacitated titular, he enjoys all the spiritual rights and all the offices proper to the parish priest, except the *Missa pro populo*. If, instead, a limited substitution is entrusted to him, the scope of his powers is defined by the letter of appointment (can. 475).
The 1917 Code reserves to the ordinary the right to freely assign cooperators to parishes where the intensity of the work of the cure of souls requires assistance, after hearing the parish priest. The competences of the cooperator vicar are derived from three sources: diocesan statutes, the letter of appointment, and the commission of the parish priest. In principle, however, he is bound to supplant the parish priest in his offices and to assist him in the entire parochial ministry, with the exception of the *Missa pro populo* (can. 476 § 6). Only the cooperator vicar is competent to receive general delegation to assist at marriages, and when he has it, he may subdelegate in individual cases. As with marriages, so also in other matters the jurisdictional power of the cooperator vicar is always delegated and never ordinary, unless he is invested with a vicarial benefice in accordance with can. 477 § 2.
BIBL.: Historical section for the present vicar: L. Fini, *Evoluzione storica canonica della cura d'anime nelle cattedrali*, Urbania 1943. Juridical section: see canonists generally under *De personis*. Also: D. Bouix, *Institutiones iuris canonici De parochio*, Paris 1855, pp. 417 ff.; E. F. Regatillo, *Los vicarios parroquiales*, in *Sal terra*, 11 (1922), pp. 767–76; 13 (1924), pp. 207–13; id., *Los vicarios auxiliares (aditores)*, ibid., 13 (1924), pp. 681, 770–78, 845–52; A. De Meester, *De vicario oeconomo*, in *Collationes Brugenses*, 23 (1923), pp. 374–76; id., *De vicario substituto*, ibid., 23 (1923), pp. 408–409; F. M. Cappello, *De vicario substituto*, in *Periodicum de re morali canonica liturgica*, 19 (1930), pp. 1–10; F. B. Cagnasso, *De potestate Ordinarii loci in vicarios paroeciales necnon in temporalia bona paroec. relig.*, in *Angelicum*, 18 (1941), pp. 36–100. Luigi Fin
