Confession is a witness of a welcoming church, pope says

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The availability of confession, even in churches heavily frequented by tourists, presents the Catholic Church as a welcoming space for an encounter with God, Pope Francis said.

Marking the 250th anniversary of the popes entrusting confessions in St. Peter’s Basilica to the Conventual Franciscans, the pope told the community of priests carrying out that ministry full time that the presence of confessors in the basilica allows pilgrims to “encounter the Lord of mercy in the sacrament of reconciliation.”

While many visit the basilica to strengthen their “faith and communion with the church,” the majority, he said Oct. 24, come as tourists “attracted by beauty, history, fascination for art.”

“But consciously or unconsciously, in everyone there exists a great and singular search for God, beauty and goodness, the desire for which lives and beats in the heart of every living man and woman in this world,” the pope said.

Even for people of other religions and those with no religion at all, the presence of priests hearing confessions “offers a witness that the church welcomes them first and foremost as a community of the saved, the forgiven, who believe, hope and love, enlightened and sustained by the tenderness of God.”

Pope Francis said that in order to be effective confessors, priests must cultivate humility and become themselves “penitents in search of forgiveness, spreading under the impressive vaults of the Vatican basilica the fragrance of humble prayer that implores and beseeches mercy.”

The pope also urged confessors to listen deeply to penitents, which entails not only hearing their words “but above all welcoming their words as a gift from God for one’s own conversion.”

“Please, do not be therapists, the less you speak the better it is,” he said. “Listen, console and forgive; you are there to forgive.”

Pope Francis asked the confessors to be “dispensers of God’s forgiveness,” priests who are “men of mercy, joyful, generous, willing to understand and to console with words and attitudes.”

A confessor, the pope said, “has a unique medicine to pour on the wounds of brothers and sisters: the mercy of God.”

He also urged them to keep in their hearts the words of St. Leopold Mandic, a Franciscan priest from the early 20th century who was said to regularly spend 12-15 hours in the confessional: “Why should we further humiliate the souls that come to prostrate themselves at our feet?”

“Always forgive, forgive everything and without asking too much,” Pope Francis said, adding that if a confessor does not understand how to forgive someone, “God understands, and you go forward, so that they may experience mercy.”