Initial Setup for Sacraments
In order to use sacraments, there are a few things a SPoC needs to set up.
Before You Begin
You may have set up a Milestones page labeled as "Sacraments" before this feature was available. If you plan to use our Sacraments section instead, we recommend hiding or renaming your old page. That way, staff won't confuse the two and wonder why they don't see what they expect to in the Sacrament section.
Here's what the Sacrament section looks like in Catholic and non-Catholic navigation menus:
| Catholic Menu | Non-Catholic Menu |
Determine Which Sacraments to Track
- Catholic instances see Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, Marriage, and Holy Orders, along with Death/Funeral Register.
- Non-Catholic instances see Baptism and Marriage.
Other pages (like Reconciliation Prep and Anointing of the Sick) are also available. If you want to show/hide or rename any of these pages, contact Support for assistance with modifications to System Lookups.
Add the Necessary Locations
It may be important to note the locations where sacraments are performed. This is usually a parish or sacrament place in your diocese or district.
Catholic instances have a default list of dioceses and parishes, but you can add more as needed. Non-Catholic instances can decide whether to add their organization's structure into MinistryPlatform. You may choose to only add the necessary locations.
- Go to or Districts.
- Check to make sure the location you want to add is not already in the list.
- Click New at the top.
- Enter the necessary information.
- Click Save.
- Go to or Sacrament Places.
- Check to make sure the location you want to add is not already in the list.
- Click New at the top.
- Enter the necessary information.
- For Diocese/District, select the associated location.
- Click Save.
Define Sponsor Types
Sponsor Types describe the role of the individual in relation to a sacrament. This may be a person who is responsible for guiding and assisting a candidate (such as a godparent), a witness or proxy, or even the next of kin (which is important when recording death/funeral information).
Some sponsor types are set up by default, but you can add or edit them as needed.
- Go to .
- Click New at the top, or open an existing Sponsor Type to edit it.
- Enter the necessary information.
- Click Save.
Give Users Access
Initially, the Sacraments section and pages are only visible to Admin users (i.e. users with Admin set to "Yes"). You must give users permissions to view and manage sacramental records via a security role. You can add a new security role or update existing ones to include this access.