High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization. It often covered the same geographic area as the manor, under the lay jurisdiction of the Lord of the Manor, which generally shared the same name and from the creation of which the parish may have derived its existence.