What is the difference between a pastor and a priest?

[Jenni_Anne]

I’ve been reading threads to try and learn on my own while I wait for my questions submitted here to be answered. I’ve noticed that there are references to pastors, priests, and confessors all seemingly separate people. Growing up I thought pastors were for most American Protestant churches while ministers were for more traditional churches who were still not Catholic, vicars were for the Anglican church, and priests were for Catholic, Orthodox, and Lutheran churches. I also thought it was priests who heard confessions. Could someone please explain this to me? This seems like my silliest question, but please understand I’m being flooded with information and I’m trying to make sense of it all before I make an educated decision as to if I would like to seriously pursue attending a mass and possibly consider conversion.

 

[Fr.Charles_Grondin]

Pastors and confessors are both priests, and can even be the same priest.

A pastor is simply the priest who is in charge of the parish. The pastor is the priest who is responsible for all the decisions for the parish. A parish could have several priests assigned to it, however only one of them can be the pastor.

A confessor is a priest who is hearing confessions. Sometimes people choose to go to only one priest for all their confessions and will refer to that priest as “my confessor.”

Hope that helps! God bless!