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 24 October, come as tourists “attracted by beauty, history, fascination for art.”
He said, however, that “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.”
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.”