Naming a grouping: cluster, pastorate, or your diocese's word
Dioceses use different words for a group of parishes served by one pastor — Pastorate, Family of Parishes, Area Faith Community, parish family, or simply Cluster. Vianney lets you set that word so every screen speaks your diocese's language. Choosing the word changes only what people *see*; underneath, each parish keeps its own separate records, registers, and finances (canon 526 §1 keeps them distinct juridic persons).
Grouping type
In Vianney Management, each grouping is one of two types:
- Cluster — the default. Screens and the web address read "Cluster".
- Pastorate — for a canonical pastorate. Screens read "Pastorate" and, once its web address is set up, the home lives at yourgroup.pastorate.vianney.church. A pastorate never shows the word "cluster".
An optional custom label
If your diocese uses its own term, leave the type as the closest fit and type the words in Label (singular) and Label (plural) — for example *Family of Parishes* / *Families of Parishes*. That wording then appears on the home screen, the parish switcher, and the shared-staff area. Leave the label blank to use the type's default word.
What this does not change
- Each parish keeps its own database, registers, and books — a grouping is a link, never a merger.
- The pastor and shared staff, the roll-ups, and the parish switcher all work exactly the same; only the wording changes.
Tips
- Setting the word is done once, in Vianney Management, by the platform owner.
- Moving a group to its own pastorate web address needs that address to be set up first; until then the group keeps working at its current address with the new wording already in place.
- A custom pastorate address must resolve to the canonical host Vianney has on record before it is accepted — this stops a lookalike or misconfigured domain from being mistaken for the real one.