Note of the Apostolic Penitentiary on the Importance of the Internal Forum and the Inviolability of the Sacramental Seal - 1. Sacramental seal

Recently, speaking of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Holy Father Francis wished to reaffirm the indispensability and the inaccessibility of the sacramental seal: “Reconciliation itself is a benefit that the wisdom of the Church has always safeguarded with all her moral and legal might, with the sacramental seal. Although it is not always understood by the modern mentality, it is indispensable for the sanctity of the sacrament and for the freedom of the conscience of the penitent, who must be certain, at any time, that the sacramental conversation will remain within the secrecy of the confessional, between one’s own conscience that opens to grace, and God, with the necessary mediation of the priest. The sacramental seal is indispensable and no human power has jurisdiction over it, nor lay any claim to it”.[3] The inviolable secrecy of Confession comes directly from the revealed divine right and is rooted in the very nature of the Sacrament, to the point of not admitting any exception in the ecclesial sphere, nor, least of all, in the civil one. Indeed, it is as if the celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation contained the very essence of Christianity and of the Church: the Son of God became man to save us and decided to involve the Church as a “necessary instrument”, and in her, those whom he chose, called and constituted as his ministers. In order to express this truth, the Church has always taught that priests, in the celebration of the Sacraments, act “in persona Christi capitis”, that is, in the very person of Christ the Head: “Christ allows us to use his ‘I’, we speak in the ‘I’ of Christ, Christ is ‘drawing us into himself’ and allows us to be united. He unites us to his ‘I’ [...] It is this union with his ‘I’ which is realized in the words of the consecration. Also in the ‘I absolve you’ because none of us could absolve from sins — it is the ‘I’ of Christ, of God, who alone can absolve”.[4]

Every penitent who humbly goes to the priest to confess his sins or her bears witness to the great mystery of the Incarnation and the supernatural essence of the Church and of the ministerial priesthood, through which the Risen Christ comes to meet men, sacramentally — that is, really — touches their life and saves them. For this reason, the defence of the sacramental seal by the confessor, if necessary usque ad sanguinis effusionem, represents not only an act of dutiful “allegiance” towards the penitent, but much more: a necessary testimony — a “martyrdom” — rendered directly to the uniqueness and salvific universality of Christ and the Church.[5] The matter of the seal is currently expounded and regulated by cann. 983-984 and 1388, §1 of the cic, and can. 1456 of the cceo, as well as n. 1467 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, where significantly, we read that the Church “establishes”, by virtue of her own authority, rather than that she “declares” — that is, recognizes as an irreducible datum, which derives precisely from the sanctity of the sacrament instituted by Christ — “that every priest who hears confessions is bound under very severe penalties to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins that his penitents have confessed to him”. The confessor is never allowed, for any reason whatsoever, “to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner” (cic can. 983, §1), just as “a confessor is prohibited completely from using knowledge acquired from confession to the detriment of the penitent even when any danger of revelation is excluded” (cic can. 984, §1) The doctrine also helped to further specify the content of the sacramental seal, which includes “all the sins of both the penitent and others known from the penitent’s confession, both mortal and venial, both occult and public, as manifested with regard to absolution and therefore known to the confessor by virtue of sacramental knowledge”.[6] The sacramental seal, therefore, concerns everything the penitent has admitted, even in the event that the confessor does not grant absolution: if the confession is invalid or for some reason the absolution is not given, the seal must be maintained in any case.

The priest, in fact, becomes aware of the sins of the penitent “non ut homo, sed ut Deus — not as man, but as God”,[7] to such an extent that he simply “does not know” what he was told during confession, because he did not listen to him as a man but, precisely, in the name of God. The confessor could therefore also “swear”, without any prejudice to his conscience, to “not know” what he knows only as a minister of God. Because of its peculiar nature, the sacramental seal manages to bind the confessor also “interiorly”, to the point that he is forbidden to remember voluntarily the confession and he is obliged to suppress any involuntary recollection of it. The secrecy deriving from the seal also binds those who, in any way, have become aware of the sins during confession: “The interpreter, if there is one, and all others who in any way have knowledge of sins from confession are also obliged to observe secrecy” (cic can. 983, §2). The absolute prohibition imposed by the sacramental seal is such as to prevent the priest from speaking of the content of the confession to the penitent himself, outside of the sacrament, without the “explicit (and all the more so if not requested) permission” of the penitent.[8] The seal therefore lies beyond the reach of the volition of the penitent who, once the sacrament has been celebrated, does not have the power to relieve the confessor of the obligation to secrecy, because this duty comes directly from God.

Defence of the sacramental seal and the sanctity of Confession can never constitute any form of connivance with . On the contrary they represent the only true antidote to the evil that threatens man and the whole world; they constitute the real possibility of surrendering to the love of God, of allowing oneself to be converted and transformed by this love, learning to correspond to it concretely in one’s life. In the presence of sins that involve criminal offenses, it is never permissible, as a condition for absolution, to place on the penitent the obligation to turn himself in to civil justice, by virtue of the natural principle, incorporated in every system, according to which “nemo tenetur se detegere”. At the same time, however, belonging to the very “structure” of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, as a condition for its validity, is sincere repentance, together with the firm intention to reform and not repeat the evil committed. Should there be a penitent who has been a victim of the evil of others, it will be the concern of the confessor to instruct him regarding his rights as well as about the practical juridical instruments to refer to in order to report the fact in a civil and/or ecclesiastical forum to invoke justice. Any political action or legislative initiative aimed at “breaching” the inviolability of the sacramental seal would constitute an unacceptable offense against libertas Ecclesiae, which does not receive its legitimacy from individual States, but from God; it would also constitute a violation of religious freedom, legally fundamental to all other freedoms, including the freedom of conscience of individual citizens, both penitents and confessors. Breaking the seal would be tantamount to violating the wretched man within the sinner.

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Note of the Apostolic Penitentiary on the Importance of the Internal Forum and the Inviolability of the Sacramental Seal

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