There are nine Roman Congregations in the Roman Curia, the central administrative organisation of the Catholic Church. In exercising supreme, full, and immediate power in the universal Church, the Roman pontiff makes use of the departments of the Roman Curia which, therefore, perform their duties in his name and with his authority for the good of the churches and in the service of the sacred pastors. They are the second highest-ranking departments and are a type of dicastery (department with a jurisdiction) of the Roman Curia. In Roman times, "curia" had two principal meanings.
CHRISTUS DOMINUS, 9 Curia, plural Curiae, in ancient Rome, a political division of the people. According to tradition Romulus, the city’s founder, divided the people into 3 tribes and 30 curiae, each of which in turn was composed of 10 families (gentes). Originally it applied to the wards of the comitia curiata. Each Congregation is led by a prefect, who is a cardinal. The result of a long evolution from the early centuries of Christianity , the Curia was given its modern form by Pope Sixtus V late in the 16th century. Roman Curia, Latin Curia Romana, the group of various Vatican bureaus that assist the pope in the day-to-day exercise of his primatial jurisdiction over the Roman Catholic church. However, over time the name became applied to the senate house, which in its various incarnations housed meetings of the Roman senate from the time of the kings until the beginning of the seventh century AD.