Sacramental secrecy “is indispensable for the sanctity of the sacrament and for the freedom of conscience of the penitent,” says the Apostolic Penitentiary in a 2019 document.

Newsroom (09/12/2023 08:53, Gaudium Press) On September 11, a bill was presented in the Costa Rican Congress by Congressman Antonio Ortega to modify the country’s Criminal Procedure Code to allow for the seal of confession to be violated in cases of sexual crimes against minors.   This is not the only country to attempt this, lawmakers in the United States have also considered trying to set legislation to break the seal of confession.

In response, a group of Catholic leaders from Costa Rica, including Bishop Daniel Blanco, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San José, recently took part in a webinar entitled “Sacramental secrecy: a canonical, legal and preventive approach” to present the Church’s position on the bill.

The Episcopal Conference of Costa Rica has also spoken out against this bill, noting that according to canon 983 of the Code of Canon Law, sacramental secrecy “is inviolable”, which prevents the confessor from revealing the penitent’s confession.

At the seminar, Monsignor Blanco explained that the penitent “must be certain, at all times, that the sacramental conversation will remain within the secrecy of the confessional, between his conscience open to grace and to God, with the necessary mediation of the priest. Sacramental secrecy is indispensable, and no human power has jurisdiction over it, nor should it claim it.”

The bishop also stressed that the penitent seeks the sacrament aware that the priest will hear the sins “not as a man, but as God”, that is, “in persona Christi capitis” – “in the person of Christ, head” of the Church.

Citing a document from the Apostolic Penitentiary, Archbishop Blanco pointed out that “any political action or legislative initiative aimed at ‘violating’ the inviolability of sacramental secrecy would constitute an unacceptable offense against ‘libertas Ecclesiae’ [the freedom of the Church], which receives its legitimacy not from individual states, but from God; it would also constitute a violation of religious freedom, which is legally fundamental for all other freedoms, including the freedom of conscience of every citizen, both penitents and confessors.”

With information from CNA