The Name of God Is Mercy (3 page)

T
HESE
phenomena you allude to, psychics and fortune-tellers, have always been part of human history, have they not?

Yes, of course, there have always been soothsayers, diviners, and fortune-tellers. But not as many people looked to them for spiritual health and healing as they do today. Mostly, people are looking for someone to listen to them. Someone willing to grant them time, to listen to their dramas and difficulties. This is what I call the “apostolate of the ear,” and it is important. Very important. I feel compelled to say to confessors: talk, listen with patience, and above all tell people that God loves them. And if the confessor cannot absolve a person, he needs to explain why, he needs to give them a blessing, even without the holy sacrament. The love of God exists even for those who are not disposed to receive it: that man, that woman, that boy, or that girl—they are all loved by God, they are sought out by God, they are in need of blessing. Be tender with these people. Do not push them away. People are suffering. It is a huge responsibility to be a confessor. Confessors have before them the lost sheep
that God loves so much; if we don’t show them the love and mercy of God, we push them away and perhaps they will never come back. So embrace them and be compassionate, even if you can’t absolve them. Give them a blessing anyway. I have a niece who was married to a man in a civil wedding before he received the annulment of his previous marriage. They wanted to get married, they loved each other, they wanted children, and they had three. The judge had even awarded him custody of the children from his first marriage. This man was so religious that every Sunday, when he went to Mass, he went to the confessional and said to the priest, “I know you can’t absolve me but I have sinned by doing this and that, please give me a blessing.” This is a religiously mature man.

W
HY
is it important to go to confession? You were the first Pope to give confession publicly during the penitential liturgy in St. Peter’s….Isn’t it enough to repent and ask for forgiveness on one’s own, and sort things out with God alone?

Jesus said to his apostles: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (John 20:19–23). Therefore, the apostles and all their successors—the bishops and their colleagues the priests—become instruments of the mercy of God. They act
in persona Christi
. This is very beautiful. It has deep significance because we are social beings. If you are not capable of talking to your brother about your mistakes, you can be sure that you can’t talk about them with God, either, and therefore you end up confessing into the mirror, to yourself. We are social beings,
and forgiveness has a social implication; my sin wounds mankind, my brothers and sisters, and society as a whole. Confessing to a priest is a way of putting my life into the hands and heart of someone else, someone who in that moment acts in the name of Jesus. It’s a way to be real and authentic: we face the facts by looking at another person and not in the mirror. Saint Ignatius, before changing his life and understanding that he had to become a soldier of Christ, fought in the battle of Pamplona. He was a soldier in the army of the king of Spain, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and he confronted the French army. He was seriously wounded and thought he was going to die. There was no priest on the battlefield. So he called a comrade in arms and confessed to him; he told him his sins. Being a lay person, the soldier could not absolve him, but the need to face another person and confess was so strong that he decided to do it like that. It is a beautiful lesson. It is true that I can talk to the Lord and ask him for forgiveness, implore him. And the Lord will forgive me immediately. But it is important that I go to confession, that I sit in front of a priest who embodies Jesus, that I kneel before
Mother Church, called to dispense the mercy of Christ. There is objectivity in this gesture of genuflection before the priest; it becomes the vehicle through which grace reaches and heals me. I have always been moved by the gesture in the tradition of Eastern churches, where the confessor welcomes the penitent by putting his stole over the penitent’s head and an arm around his shoulder, as if embracing him. It is the physical representation of acceptance and mercy. We are reminded that we are not there to be judged. It’s true that there is always a certain amount of judgment in confession, but there is something greater than judgment that comes into play. It is being face-to-face with someone who acts
in persona Christi
to welcome and forgive you. It is an encounter with mercy.

W
HAT
can you tell us about your experiences as a confessor? I ask because it seems to have profoundly marked your life. During the first Mass you celebrated with the faithful after your election, in the parish church of St. Anna, on March 17, 2013, you spoke of the man who said: “Oh, Father, I have done some terrible
things!” to which you replied, “Go to Jesus, he forgives and forgets everything.” In that same homily you reminded us that God never tires of forgiving. A bit later, during the Angelus, you reminded us of another episode, the one of the old lady who said to you as she confessed that without the mercy of God, the world would not exist.

I remember that episode very well; it is fixed in my memory. I can see her in front of me now. She was an elderly lady, small, tiny, dressed all in black, like many of the women you see in parts of Southern Italy, Galicia, or Portugal. I had recently become auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires and we were holding a large Mass for the sick in the presence of the statue of the Madonna of Fatima. I was there to take confession. Toward the end of the Mass I got up because I had to leave, I had to celebrate a confirmation. That’s when the lady appeared, elderly and humble. I turned toward her and called her
abuela
, grandmother, as we do in Argentina.

“
Abuela
, do you want to confess?”

“Yes,” she replied.

And since I was ready to leave, I said: “But if you have no sins…”

Her answer was swift and immediate: “We all have sins.”

“But maybe the Lord can’t forgive them,” I said.

“The Lord forgives everything.”

“How do you know?”

“If the Lord didn’t forgive everything, our world would not exist.”

It was an example of the faith of simple people who are imbued with knowledge even if they have never studied theology. During that first Angelus, I said—so that people would understand—that my reply was: “You must have studied at the Gregorian University!” In fact, my real answer was, “You must have studied with Royo Marín!” This was a reference to the Dominican priest Antonio Royo Marín, the author of an important work of moral theology. I was struck by that woman’s words: without mercy, without God’s forgiveness, the world would not exist; it couldn’t exist. As a confessor, even when I have found
myself before a locked door, I have always tried to find a crack, just a tiny opening so that I can pry open that door and grant forgiveness and mercy.

Y
OU
once said that the confessional should not be a “dry cleaner.” What does that mean? What did you mean by that?

It was an example, an image to explain the hypocrisy of those who believe that sin is a stain, only a stain, something that you can have dry-cleaned so that everything goes back to normal. The way you take a jacket or dress to have a stain removed: you put it in the wash and that’s it. But sin is more than a stain. Sin is a wound; it needs to be treated, healed. This is why I used that expression: I was trying to explain that going to confession is not like taking your clothes to the dry cleaner.

H
ERE
is another example you have used. What does it mean when you say the confessional shouldn’t be a torture chamber, either?

Those words were directed more to priests, to confessors. And they referred to the fact that some confessors can be excessively curious, their curiosity can be a little unhealthy. I once heard about a woman, married for years, who stopped going to confession because when she was a girl of thirteen or fourteen, the confessor asked her where she put her hands when she slept. There can be an excess of curiosity, especially in sexual matters. Or an insistence for people to be explicit about details that are not necessary. Anyone who confesses does well to feel shame for his sins: shame is a grace we ask for; it is good, positive, because it makes us humble. But in a dialogue with a confessor we need to be listened to, not interrogated. Then the confessor says whatever he needs to and offers advice delicately. This is what I meant when I said that confessionals should never be torture chambers.

W
AS
Jorge Mario Bergoglio a strict or an indulgent confessor?

I always tried to take time with confessions, even when I was bishop and cardinal. Now I hear confessions much less, but once in a while I still do. At times, I’d like to be able to walk into a church and sit down in a confessional again. So to answer the question: when I heard confessions, I always thought about myself, about my own sins, and about my need for mercy, and so I tried to forgive a great deal.

W
HAT
do you need in order to obtain mercy? Is it necessary to have a certain predisposition?

The first thing that comes to mind is the phrase “I can’t take it anymore!” You reach a point when you need to be understood, to be healed, to be made whole, forgiven. You need to get up again, to be able to resume your path. As the Psalm says, “My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn” (Psalm 51:19). Saint Augustine wrote: “Search within your heart for what is pleasing to God. Your heart must be crushed. Are you afraid that it might perish so? From the mouth of the Psalmist comes this reply:
A clean heart create for me, God
(Psalm 51:12). The impure heart must be destroyed so that the pure one may be created. We should be displeased with ourselves when we commit sin, for sin is
displeasing to God. Sinful though we are, let us at least be like God in this, that we are displeased at what displeases him” (
Discourses
19.2–3). The Church Fathers teach us that a shattered heart is the most pleasing gift to God. It is the sign that we are conscious of our sins, of the evil we have done, of our wretchedness, and of our need for forgiveness and mercy.