pastoro

The fence to get right, because the dictionary is unusually firm about it. A pastoro is the minister of one of the Protestant churches. A pastro, at rank 497, is a consecrated functionary of a religious cult, which in a Christian setting means a priest: the one who says mass and hears confession. Ordination and sacraments are the dividing line, not denomination in a loose sense. Get it wrong in either direction and a Catholic or a Lutheran reader will notice immediately.

The rest of the register, in ascending order of hierarchy. A monaĥo at 2,047 is a monk, in a community and under vows, and a monaĥino a nun. A pastro serves a parish, and the priest's superior is an episkopo, a bishop, three ranks further down this same list. Above that sit ĉefepiskopo and kardinalo, and papo for the pope. A predikanto is a preacher, defined by what they do rather than by any office, and predikisto is the trade.

The words around the building and the belief. A preĝejo is the church you walk into, built transparently from preĝi to pray plus the place suffix. An eklezio is the Church as an institution: la Katolika Eklezio, la Anglikana Eklezio. English uses church for both and Esperanto never does. Paroĥo is the parish, kredo the faith, diservo the service.

Why English is confusing here and Esperanto is not. English pastor covers Protestant ministers in America, some Catholic parish priests in older usage, and a general figure of pastoral care. Esperanto put each of those on a different word and left pastoro with a single narrow job, which is precisely the kind of tidying that makes the language worth learning even when the roots are borrowed.