pastoral

adj

1. Of or pertaining to shepherds or herders of other livestock.

   “Like the Mesolithic age of 10,000-8000 B.C., the period 6000-4000 B.C. seems to be one of the fall of fortresses and the rise of pastoral nomadism.”

2. Relating to rural life and scenes, in particular of poetry.

   “We were living a pastoral life.”

   “[…] these pastoral farms, / Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke / Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!”

   “There was a tone, too, of pastoral poetry shed over the new scenes to which they were just introduced, that had a greater effect from the contrast to those, artificial and crowded, which they had just left.”

   “He wanders west as far as Memphis, a solitary migrant upon that flat and pastoral landscape.”

3. Relating to the care of souls, to the pastor of a church or to any local religious leader charged with the service of individual parishioners, i.e. a priest or rabbi.

   “pastoral duties”

   “a pastoral letter”

   ““In terms of pastoral consequences,” Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, who leads the Vatican’s office on doctrine, said in a news conference Monday, “the principle of welcoming all is clear in the words of Pope Francis.””

noun

1. A poem describing the life and manners of shepherds; a poem in which the speakers assume the character of shepherds; an idyll; a bucolic.

   “Ethel was silent from surprise: she had prepared herself for anger—even sorrow; but ridicule left her without an answer. What could she say to a hearer, who only smiled, and to whom emotion was only a scene in a pastoral?”

2. A cantata relating to rural life; a composition for instruments characterized by simplicity and sweetness; a lyrical composition the subject of which is taken from rural life.
3. A letter of a pastor to his charge; specifically, a letter addressed by a bishop to his diocese.
4. A letter of the House of Bishops, to be read in each parish.