All Catholic priests by their ordination have the privilege and responsibility of preaching God’s mercy, reconciling sinners to God in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, and becoming merciful like God the Father is merciful through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
What’s unique about the Missionaries of Mercy? Pope Francis has appointed Missionaries of Mercy to do focus on carrying out these activities in an exemplary way as a sign of the Church’s maternal solicitude for all who needs God’s mercy.
He has also given Missionaries of Mercy something unprecedented: the ability to hear confessions anywhere in the world (occasionally only certain priests can hear confessions in certain places) and the faculties to absolve various serious ecclesiastical crimes and sins that normally only he and the Vatican office that deals with confession are able to forgive.
These five crimes and sins with ecclesiastical censures reserved to the Holy See, which Missionaries of Mercy can absolve are:
- Profaning the Holy Eucharist by taking the Eucharistic species away or keeping them for a sacrilegious purpose
- Using physical force against the Pope
- Absolving a priest who has sought to forgive someone in confession with whom he has committed a sexual sin.
- Absolving a priest who has directly violated the sacramental seal of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, revealing something a penitent communicated to him.
- Absolving someone who has recorded with a technical device what a priest or penitent has said in the Sacrament of Confession (whether real or simulated, meaning whether it was an actual confession or whether someone was impersonating a priest or penitent), or absolving someone who has published and spread such a recording through the means of social communication.
What does this mean?
If someone had committed such a sin with knowledge and free will, they would incur an ecclesiastical penalty such that ordinarily they would not be able, outside of a danger of death situation, to receive absolution in the Sacrament of Confession. The punishment due to their crime would first need to be lifted. In a typical circumstance, a confessor would need to ask the penitent to return the following day as he confidentially asked the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary (which assists the Pope in supervising priest confessors and spiritual directors across the world) outside of confession for the permission to absolve the censure incurred so that the priest could absolve the sin committed. The Pope has given the Missionaries of Mercy the ability to do what he could do in the Sacrament of Confession and absolve both the punishment and the sin right then.
The Missionary of Mercy is able to do so using the regular formula of absolution with the intention of absolving from the censure, or if he thinks it will bring greater peace to the penitent, he may, before pronouncing the regular formula of absolution, absolve the penitent from the censure by pronouncing a specific formula as advised by the Apostolic See.
Even though the nature of the reserved sins is very serious, the sacramental seal of the confessional of course still applies. Nothing can be revealed that was confessed.
Pope Francis’ giving the Missionaries of Mercy these faculties normally reserved to him and to the Apostolic Penitentiary was a particular action during the 2016 Jubilee of Mercy to remove almost any obstacle necessary so that people would be able to receive God’s mercy. The extension of these faculties was done with the same intention.
Those who have committed such sins are therefore able to do one of two things: they could approach Missionaries of Mercy, whose contact information would be found elsewhere on the website, who would be able to absolve them as they come to confession; or they could approach any priest, confessing what they’ve done, knowing that that priest would need to ask the penitent to return to confession after about 24 hours as he confidentially (and without any details that could tie a particular sin to a particular person) asks the permission of the Apostolic Penitentiary to remove the penalty so as to resolve the sin.