By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer

The Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary is planning a conference this week to discuss the five “ultimate crimes” committed by clergy, sins considered so deadly they require forgiveness from the Pope himself.

The five crimes include abortion, using the Eucharistic host in Satanic rites, clergy pedophile offences, violation of the confessional, and “offences against the person of the Pope.”  For these “five worst sins,” confession is not enough and a special dispensation from the Pope is needed for absolution.

The Apostolic Penitentiary, currently headed by Cardinal James Stafford of the United States, was once described by Pope John XXIII as the “the most secret” of Vatican departments. It is responsible for matters relating to confession, absolution, indulgences and the forgiveness of sins, and is sometimes described as “the tribunal of the soul.”

Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, Cardinal Stafford’s deputy at the Penitentiary, would not give numbers but said the five deadly sins were on the increase, and it took “constant work” by the tribunal to keep pace. While cases are normally decided in one sitting, it sometimes takes several sessions for the tribunal to satisfy itself that penance was “authentic, spontaneous and sincere,” Monsignor Girotti told the Times Online.

The conference is not an attempt to”showcase” the work of the Penitentiary, he said, but rather to “show that we are not a bureaucratic department but one of grace and mercy, charged by the Holy Father with giving life and meaning to confession, one of the most important of the sacraments. We deal with the ultimate goal of the Church, the salvation of souls.”
 
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