GUIDELINES ON MISSION STATION

 

I. NATURE

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1. A Mission Station is a defined territory established within a parish or neighboring parishes entrusted under the care of a Misison Station Administrator who serves, at the same time, as the parochial vicar of the parish to which the seat of the mission station belongs, and whose task is to prepare the territory for its subsequent elevation to a parish, if this should be possible at all.

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2. A Mission Station is not a parish, a quasi-parish or a chaplaincy. It is different from them according to their strict significance and implications.

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3. Since an established Mission Station has no legal personality of its own it does not enjoy the same privileges given to a parish. Its legal personality is dependent on its mother parish.

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II. ADMINISTRATION OF THE MISSION STATION

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1. The Administrator of the Mission Station is the one responsible for the pastoral care of the faithful in the same Mission Station with the end view of preparing the place and people for its subsequent elevation to a parish, if this is possible. He exercises pastoral care under the authority of the Archbishop who appointed him and under the guidance of the Parish Priest of the mother parish.

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2. The Mission Station can have its own Mission Station Pastoral Counci that has the same substantive, constitutive and functional nature as the Parish Council that coordinates and collaborates closely herewith.

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3. The Mission Station draws pastoral, administrative and financial support from the mother parish, or in the case of Mission Station covering territories belonging to several parishes, from these parishes, in the kind and manner needed, and thus accordingly stipulated with the confirmation of the Archbishop, if required.

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III. SERVICES

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1. The function especially entrusted to the Mission Station Administrator are as follows:

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a. the administration of Baptism;

b. the administration of Viaticum and of the Anointing of the Sick

c. the assistance at Marriages and the Nuptial Blessing

d. the conducting of Funerals

e. the administration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation

f. the celebration of the Holy Eucharist