Canon law designates the parish priest, or pastor, as the proper pastor of the parish entrusted to him, exercising the pastoral care of the community under the authority of the diocesan bishop with a stability distinct from other priestly assignments: a parish priest's removal or transfer, unlike many other clergy appointments, follows specific canonical procedures intended to protect the office from arbitrary removal, reflecting the parish priest's particular, personally exercised responsibility for a defined community rather than a delegated share of the bishop's own general authority of the kind a vicar general or auxiliary exercises.
A parish priest is normally appointed by the diocesan bishop, often for a renewable term of years rather than indefinitely, following the reforms of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which introduced optional fixed terms for pastors in place of the previously more common practice of appointment for life; the choice between the two systems is left to individual bishops' conferences to decide for their territory. The pastor's responsibilities include maintaining the parish's sacramental records, overseeing its finances in cooperation with a finance council, and, in most parishes, working alongside a pastoral council of lay parishioners established to advise, though not to govern alongside, the pastor on the community's pastoral life.