How dioceses work with ParishConnect

Parishes come first

ParishConnect was built for the parish office. Every parish keeps its own members, families, wards, Mass times, news and member app, and runs them day to day without waiting on anyone else.

A diocese, archdiocese or eparchy is added on top of that. It does not replace the parish's work or take ownership of its records. This matters for trust: parishes are far more willing to join a diocesan system when they know their member data stays theirs.

The hierarchy

The structure has a few clear levels: the diocese, its subdivisions, and the parishes inside them. A parish can belong to a diocese and, optionally, to one subdivision of that diocese.

Some parishes have no diocese at all. These independent parishes use every feature on their own and never appear in a diocesan list unless they are linked.

Use your own terms

Dioceses name their subdivisions differently. A Latin diocese may use Deanery, a Syro-Malabar eparchy may use Forane, others use Vicariate, Region or District.

Each diocese sets its own singular and plural term once, and every screen for that diocese uses it. Nobody has to translate between the software's words and their own.

Three consent modes

Every parish in a diocese chooses how much its parent levels can see. Self-managed is the default: the diocese and deanery see only directory details such as the parish name, priest, contact details and address.

Monitored lets them view parish records without changing anything. Managed lets them view and manage records, which suits parishes that want the chancery or curia to help run their office.

The parish can change this choice at any time, and every change is recorded.

Asking for access

When a diocese or deanery needs more than directory details, it sends an access request to the parish, asking for Monitored or Managed access with a short note explaining why.

The parish admin sees the request with a badge, and can approve or decline it. Nothing opens until the parish says yes, and parents never see an error page — just a clear 'Request access' option.

Roles for diocesan teams

Diocese admins, staff and viewers each get a defined set of permissions, and the same applies to deanery or forane teams. Admins can narrow a person's permissions further.

Every administrative action — granting a role, onboarding a parish, changing oversight — is written to an audit log, so the chancery can always see who did what.

Directory and reporting

Even in Self-managed mode, the diocese has a complete directory of its parishes and a view of each parish's oversight choice, pending requests and recent activity. That is often enough for diocesan reporting without touching member data.

How to start

The simplest path is to begin with one parish. Set it up, invite a few families to the member app, and see how the office uses it.

When you are ready, contact us to set up your diocese, name your subdivisions, and invite more parishes. Each parish joins as Self-managed and decides for itself whether to share more.