Pastor

The owner of a cantonal parish bore the title of Upper pastor . The title was created after the Rhineland was occupied by France in 1794. In 1801, Napoleon established the diocese of Aachen for the first time. The parts of the Archdiocese of Cologne on the left bank of the Rhine , which had previously been annexed to the French state, were assigned to the newly founded Diocese of Aachen. The diocese administration was divided into cantonal and succursal parishes. The owners of the cantonal parishes were referred to as senior pastors. In Cologne , for example, the four main parishes (Dompfarrei, St. Kolumba, Maria im Kapitol, St. Peter) were cantonal parishes.

Since the dissolution of the Aachen diocese in 1821, the title no longer has any constitutional or ecclesiastical significance. Nevertheless, the title is still used today in some Catholic parishes in areas on the left bank of the Rhine in the Archdiocese of Cologne. Traditionally, for example, the pastor at St. Stephanus in Grevenbroich-Elsen or the pastor at the Quirinusmünster in Neuss are called senior pastors.

Outside the Catholic area, the term senior pastor has been used in large Protestant communities since the 16th century or in early German military pastoral care. In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia , the deputy superintendent bore this title. The title is still in use today on both the Protestant and Catholic sides in the pastoral care of the Federal Police of the Federal Republic of Germany. Comparable was the title of Pastor Primarius of the Evangelical Church of Saxony , such as Valentin Weigel zu Zschopau or Ernst Katzer zu Löbau.

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• Raspels, Bernhard: asked? made clear! In: Church newspaper for the Archdiocese of Cologne, issue 8/2007 of February 23, 2007, JPBachem publishing house, Cologne