“You're here to forgive!” insisted Pope Francis, like a refrain, to the confessors of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, in an audience with them on the morning of October 24, 2024. Some 15 full-time Franciscan religious provide this daily service at the world's largest basilica. The Pope said that he too goes to them for confession.
Members of the “Vatican College of Penitentiaries” met with the Pope on the 250th anniversary of Pope Clement XIV's 1774 motu proprio Miserator Dominus, which entrusted the Franciscans with the mission of hearing the confessions of the faithful in St. Peter's Basilica.
Other orders have similar missions in other churches of Rome, for example the Dominicans in the Basilica of Mary Major.
The search for God
“St. Peter's Basilica is visited by more than 40,000 people every day,” the Pope said to the priests of various nationalities, who offer confessions in several languages. Whether it's sunny, rainy or windy, the Vatican Basilica is besieged from morning to night by long lines of visitors winding their way through St. Peter's Square, waiting to pass through security checks to enter the doors.
Although many enter St. Peter's as tourists, there is “in everyone, consciously or unconsciously, a great quest: the search for God,” said the Pontiff.
He advised confessors not to play “psychiatrist,” but to “forgive everything, everything, everything.”
“We're here to forgive; others will be there to argue,” he insisted.
The 266th pope also spoke of counting himself among the penitents who come to kneel in these confessionals.
“My confessor died a few months ago, [so] I go to confession with you, in St. Peter's. You do it well!” he congratulated them.
According to an interview published in L'Osservatore Romano in 2009, the Vatican designated 14 Franciscans to hear confessions in the basilica that houses the tomb of the first Head of the Catholic Church. Each hears the confessions of between 8,500 and 9,000 faithful a year.
When Francis talks about the pope who suppressed the Jesuits
Clement XIV was a Franciscan and was on the Throne of Peter from 1769 to 1774. As the pope who asked the Order of St. Francis to take the role of confessors at St. Peter's also had a key role in the history of Pope Francis' spiritual family, the meeting was also a time for joking.
“Clement XIV [entrusted this mission to the Franciscans, editor's note], perhaps that's one of the good things he did,” Francis quipped about the pontiff who, in 1773, suppressed the Society of Jesus. (They were reinstated in 1814 by Pius VII.)
The former superior of Argentina's Jesuits then joked about the influence of Clement XIV's close friend and confrere, the Franciscan Innocenzo Bontempi. “Poor [Clement XIV] -- the other things he did were inspired by your brother Bontempi, who, I believe, is still in hell,” he said, triggering laughter.
And the Pontiff referred to an anecdote about a “cunning” Franciscan who, on the death of Clement XIV, finding himself without a protector, went to negotiate with the superior of his congregation, offering to exchange three papal bulls — important documents signed by the pope — for money and his independence from the community.
The superior is said to have counted the bulls, remarking cynically, “But one is missing, my dear. [...] The one that ensures the salvation of your soul.”
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As a side note, Clement XIV was also the pope who witnessed Mozart's somehow miraculous ability to transcribe a piece of music after having heard it just once. Read about that below:
