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Visiting clergy

Visiting clergy are external priests, deacons, or other clergy who celebrate at your parish without being on staff — a neighboring pastor covering a weekend, a retired priest helping out for a season, a chaplain visiting from another diocese. Sacramentum tracks them as their own type of record so you can schedule them, pay them according to a help-out fee policy, and keep their compensation history separate from staff payroll.

This article covers the visiting clergy people record itself: who they are, how to reach them, and what your parish pays them. The actual booking workflow — assigning them to specific Masses and tracking each engagement's payment — is a separate area called Visiting Clergy Engagements, covered in Visiting Clergy Engagements.

The visiting clergy page​

Navigate to Admin Dashboard → People & Places → Visiting Clergy. The page shows every visiting priest or deacon your parish has on file with the following columns:

  • Name — the cleric's name with their preferred title (Fr., Rev., Msgr., Bishop, Deacon, Dr., or a custom title) and contact email if one was provided.
  • Diocese — the home diocese or religious order they serve under.
  • Help-out fees — a quick read-out of the configured weekend base fee plus additional-Mass fee, weekday base fee plus additional-Mass fee, and mileage reimbursement rate.
  • Status — a green Active badge or a gray Archived badge.
  • Actions — Edit and Archive / Reactivate buttons.

A Show archived checkbox in the toolbar reveals clergy you have archived in the past. Add visiting clergy opens the new-record dialog.

Visiting clergy vs. staff clergy

This page is only for clergy who are not on your parish staff. Pastors, parochial vicars, and assigned deacons are managed in Managing users, where you create and maintain their login accounts. Visiting clergy do not get login accounts in Sacramentum — they are people-records only.

Adding a visiting priest​

  1. Click Add visiting clergy in the toolbar.
  2. Enter the cleric's First name and Last name. Both are required.
  3. Choose a Preferred Title from the dropdown — Fr., Rev., Msgr., Bp. (Bishop), Dcn. (Deacon), Dr., or Custom Title. If you pick Custom Title, a text field appears so you can enter the exact form your parish uses.
  4. Enter an Email if you have one. This is optional — many visiting clergy do not have a parish-issued address, and Sacramentum does not send them logins or notifications.
  5. Enter the Diocese or religious order — for example, Archdiocese of Chicago or Order of Preachers.
  6. Add any Notes that would help a coordinator the next time this priest helps out — vesting size, dietary preferences, faculties on file, or anything else worth remembering.
  7. Set the Help-out fees (see the next section), then click Create.

The new record is created with Active status. Their preferred title automatically appears anywhere their name is shown — in scheduling dropdowns, on bulletin exports, on engagement payouts — through Sacramentum's clergy-name formatter, so you do not need to type "Fr." in front of their name yourself.

Setting help-out fees​

Each visiting cleric record carries its own fee structure so that when you assign them to a Mass, the engagement automatically inherits the right amounts. The fees are entered in dollars and cents.

There are three groups of fees:

  • Weekend — the Base fee is what your parish pays for the first weekend Mass, and Additional Mass fee is what you add per extra Mass on the same trip. Saturday and Sunday count as weekend by default.
  • Weekday — the same idea for Monday-through-Friday Masses.
  • Mileage reimbursement — a per-mile Rate used when the engagement records travel distance.

You can leave any of these blank or set them to zero if your parish does not pay that component. The fees are stored on the visiting clergy record but can still be overridden on a specific engagement when needed (a one-time stipend, a bishop's special honorarium, etc.).

Set fees once, reuse them every time

Configuring the help-out policy on the cleric's record means coordinators don't have to remember the right numbers every weekend. The engagement workflow reads these fees automatically when you book a Mass, and you can still adjust per booking.

Editing a visiting priest​

Click Edit on the cleric's row. The dialog shows the same fields as the create form. You can change the name, title, email, diocese, notes, and any of the help-out fees. Click Save to apply.

Edits do not retroactively change engagements that were already recorded — those engagements keep the fee values they had at the time of booking. Only future engagements pick up the new amounts.

Archiving and reactivating​

When a visiting priest stops helping at your parish — they retire, transfer, or simply move on — archive them rather than delete the record so their engagement history is preserved.

  1. Click Archive on the cleric's row.
  2. The badge changes to Archived and the cleric is hidden from the default list (turn on Show archived to see them).
  3. Archived clergy do not appear in scheduling dropdowns or in the Include visiting clergy toggle when you assign Masses, so coordinators won't accidentally pick them.

To bring an archived priest back, turn on Show archived, find their row, and click Reactivate. The badge returns to Active and they reappear in scheduling.

How visiting clergy show up elsewhere​

Visiting clergy stay out of the way until you opt them in. Several screens that pick a celebrant — the recurring schedule editor, the single Mass event editor, the Mass intentions transfer dialog, and bulk priest-assignment tools — include an Include visiting clergy checkbox. Toggle it on to add active visiting clergy to the priest dropdown alongside staff. Toggle it off to keep the list to assigned staff only.

This pattern keeps everyday scheduling fast (staff first) while still making the full roster of help-out clergy a single click away when a coordinator needs them.

What's next​