Cardinal Piacenza 
edited by Brandon Scott
Sacramental Confession has healing abilities that priests should especially emphasise to help bring God’s love and consolation to a world damaged by two years of the coronavirus pandemic. That is the advice for confessors from Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, who stressed the urgency of their work for humanity.
“In the season of Advent, every confessor is called to look to, and, with supernatural grace, in a certain way to identify with John the Baptist, repeating to the world: ‘Behold the Lamb of God’,” said Piacenza, the Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary.
In a message to confessors for Christmas 2021, the cardinal said the approach of Christmas is a time to “further emphasise those aspects of healing” of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.