Inside the Confessional: What Priests Experience, and What They Wish Nervous Penitents Knew

Priests who describe their first hours hearing confessions talk about nerves, awe, and humility — not shock or disgust. The newly ordained priest has only just received the faculty to forgive sins in Christ’s name, and he knows he is a sinner himself: every confessor also goes to confession. The Church asks him to receive each penitent the way the father in the parable runs to meet the prodigal son (Misericordiae Vultus 17; CCC 1465). He is strictly bound never to reveal or use anything he hears (canons 983–984). The most common thing priests say they wish penitents knew: “I’m not thinking less of you. I’m grateful you came.”

If you have ever sat down across from a confessor and wondered, even for a second, “What does he really think of me right now?” — you are in good company, and the answer is almost never what you fear. Priests, including men only weeks into their priesthood, describe the experience in strikingly consistent terms: nervousness about the words, a quiet awe at what they are witnessing, and deep respect for the courage it took someone to walk in. This piece is the human companion to our earlier article on whether priests judge what you confess, which covers the doctrine and the law; here, the focus is simpler: what a confessor actually experiences, especially in that first hour, and what priests say they wish every nervous penitent understood.

How a Priest Gets Ready for That First Hour

No priest walks into his first confession unprepared. Seminary formation devotes substantial time to moral theology and to the practice of confession specifically: seminarians study the moral tradition in depth and take part in practice sessions and mock confessions under a formator’s guidance before they ever hear a real one. The Church’s own norms for priestly formation call for this kind of sustained, supervised training in sacramental practice well before ordination, precisely so a man is not left to improvise the first time someone walks through the door.

Formation alone, however, is not enough to make a priest a valid minister of the sacrament. Beyond ordination itself, canon law requires that he also hold the specific faculty — the grant of authority — to absolve sins for the faithful he serves, a faculty given either directly by the law itself or by the competent Church authority (canon 966). This is one reason the Catechism can describe the diocesan bishop as the “principal minister” of reconciliation in his diocese (CCC 1462): every priest who hears confessions does so as someone sent, not simply someone ordained.

Priests commonly say — as widely shared testimony, not as a rule anyone is bound to — that they made a point of going to confession themselves in the days just before they heard their first one. It is easy to see why. Pope Francis put the logic simply in Misericordiae Vultus 17: confessors become good confessors, he wrote, above all by remaining penitents themselves, men who never stop needing and seeking the same mercy they are asked to hand on. A priest does not stand outside the sacrament looking in. He kneels in the same line everyone else does.

What Priests Say They Feel in That First Hour

Ask priests to describe their first hour in the confessional, and a handful of themes come back again and again in diocesan newspapers, priest blogs, and published reflections on early ministry. None of it is shock. Most of it is closer to reverence.

• Nerves about the words themselves. New priests often say their biggest early worry was mechanical, not moral — getting the formula of absolution right, remembering the sequence, not fumbling the stole or the sign of the cross at the moment it matters most. That nervousness tends to fade quickly with practice, several priests have written, while the deeper sense of responsibility does not.
• Relief at ordinary gentleness. Priests frequently describe an almost physical relief when a penitent is simply calm and matter-of-fact. The confessional, they say, is rarely as dramatic as a nervous penitent imagines it will be from the other side.
• Awe. This is the theme priests return to most. The Catechism teaches that in this sacrament the priest exercises the very ministry of forgiveness Christ entrusted to his Church, so that God himself is understood to act through the confessor’s absolution (CCC 1461, 1465). Priests describe feeling, quite concretely, that they are standing in a place where something is happening that is far bigger than the two people in the room.
• Humility at the penitent’s courage. More than one priest has written some version of the same line: that he is regularly humbled by the honesty of people who owe him nothing and who could easily have stayed home. Coming at all, priests say, is already most of the battle.
• Joy. Scripture gets here first. Christ himself says there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who never strayed (Luke 15:7). Priests describe feeling an echo of exactly that joy — not relief that an unpleasant duty is over, but genuine gladness that someone came home.

None of what follows in this article, or anywhere on this site, draws on the actual content of any real confession, however anonymized or disguised. The seal forbids it absolutely, and so does simple decency. Every theme above comes from priests speaking in general terms about the experience of the sacrament, never about what any specific penitent said.

What He Is Actually Listening For

Canon law gives the confessor a specific, twofold role: he sits as both judge and physician, a minister of God’s justice and God’s mercy at once, always with an eye on the penitent’s honor before God and the good of their soul (canon 978 §1). Our companion article, Do Priests Judge What You Confess?, unpacks that judge-and-physician image at length; here it is enough to say that “judge” in this sense has nothing to do with condemnation. A physician has to know what is wrong before he can treat it.

In practice, that means the priest is trained to ask questions with real care: prudently and discreetly, taking account of the penitent’s age and situation, and never pressing for the name of anyone else involved (canon 979). If a penitent shows genuine sorrow and asks for absolution, the priest may not refuse it or put it off (canon 980) — the sacrament exists to reconcile, not to test endurance. And the penance he assigns is meant to fit and heal, matched to what was confessed and to the penitent’s circumstances, never handed out as punishment for its own sake (canon 981).

What He Will Never Do

This is the part of the sacrament penitents most need to trust, so it is worth stating plainly here (the fuller legal treatment is in our sister article). The sacramental seal is absolute. A confessor is forbidden, without exception, from betraying a penitent in any way, by any word or sign, for any reason (canon 983 §1; CCC 1467). He may never use anything he has learned in confession to a penitent’s disadvantage, even where no one would ever find out (canon 984 §1). And if he holds authority — a pastor, a bishop, a superior — he may never let what he heard in confession color how he governs or judges that person in ordinary parish life (canon 984 §2).

The Church backs this with one of the heaviest penalties in canon law: a confessor who directly breaks the seal incurs an automatic excommunication reserved to the Holy See itself (canon 1386 §1, in the Code of Canon Law’s Book Six as revised in 2021). Older books and articles sometimes cite canon 1388 for this same offense — that was the correct number before the 2021 revision renumbered Book Six; the substance of the law has not changed, only where it is found.

What Priests Wish Nervous Penitents Knew

This is the practical heart of the matter — the handful of things priests say, over and over, that they wish every nervous penitent already knew walking in.

• “You won’t shock me.” Priests hear the same categories of sin, in one form or another, constantly. Whatever feels uniquely shameful to you has very likely been confessed to that same priest, in some form, that same week.
• “I probably won’t remember it.” Many priests report that specifics fade from memory quickly, on purpose or not — they hear too many confessions for any one to stay vivid for long. This is common testimony from priests, not a doctrine of the Church; either way, the seal forbids any disclosure or use of what was heard, remembered or not (canons 983–984).
• “Please just start.” If you do not know how to begin, say so. Telling the priest how long it has been and that you are nervous is a perfectly good opening line, and it is one he has heard often. Our step-by-step guide to going to confession walks through the whole rite if you want to prepare beforehand.
• “Be concrete — you don’t need to tell a story.” Priests generally find it easier to help when penitents name the sin plainly rather than building up to it through a long explanation of the surrounding circumstances. A sentence is usually enough.
• Forgotten sins are forgiven too. A sin you genuinely cannot recall in the moment is not left outside the sacrament’s reach; it is absolved along with everything you did confess, in good faith. See our article on what happens when you forget a sin in confession for more.
• Face-to-face or behind the screen — both are fine. Canon law itself protects the option of anonymity: bishops’ conferences must ensure that confessionals with a fixed grille are always available in an open part of the church, so that anyone who wants that distance can freely have it (canon 964 §2). Choosing the screen is not a lesser or more anxious way to confess. It is simply one of two ways the Church has always offered.
• “Come back often — it gets easier.” Nearly every priest who writes about this says some version of the same thing: the first confession after a long absence is the hardest one, and it gets lighter from there. Our article on returning to confession after years away is written for exactly that first, hardest visit.
• For the scrupulous: trust your confessor’s guidance. If anxiety about sin has become a heavy, repeating burden rather than an occasional discomfort, priests who work with scrupulous penitents consistently advise the same thing — pick one regular confessor and follow his guidance even when your own doubts insist he is wrong. We go into this in more depth in our piece on Catholic scrupulosity and how it is treated.

The Long View: Priests Who Loved the Confessional

Nervousness about that first hour, real as it is, tends to be only the beginning of a priest’s relationship with the confessional. Some come to love it in a way that reshapes their whole priesthood. St. John Vianney, the Curé of Ars and patron of parish priests, is the classic example: biographers describe him spending an extraordinary number of hours each day in the confessional in his later years, so many that his own bishop reportedly excused him from diocesan clergy retreats because too many people were waiting for him back in Ars. A priest, it turns out, can come to regard hearing confessions not as a burden to be endured but as the center of his day.

Pope Francis made almost the same point for every confessor, everywhere, in Evangelii Gaudium 44: the confessional, he wrote, must never become a torture chamber, but should be an encounter with the Lord’s mercy that spurs the penitent on to do better. That is the standard a priest is asked to hold himself to in every single confession, first hour or fortieth year: not scrutiny for its own sake, but mercy that actually moves someone forward.

It brings the whole picture back to the parable this article opened with. In Misericordiae Vultus 17, Pope Francis asked every confessor to do exactly what the father in the parable does: to run out and interrupt the prodigal son’s carefully prepared speech of apology, rather than let him finish it, because the father already wants him home before a single word is said (Luke 15:20–22). That is the posture the Church asks of the man on the other side of the grille — not an examiner waiting to render a verdict, but someone straining to reach you before you have even finished asking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do priests remember confessions?

Most priests say specifics fade quickly, especially once they have heard many confessions. This is testimony, though, not a guarantee anyone can rely on as doctrine. Either way it makes no legal difference: the seal forbids any disclosure or use of what was heard, remembered or forgotten (canons 983–984).

Is it awkward for the priest if he knows me?

You are always free to bring your confession to any approved confessor of your choosing, including one in a different parish or even a different rite (canon 991). If confessing to your own pastor feels uncomfortable, that freedom is exactly what the law gives you.

Do priests go to confession themselves?

Yes. Every priest needs and receives this same sacrament, ordinarily on a regular basis, just as every other member of the Church does.

Can I ask a priest for advice without making a confession?

Yes, and it is worth saying so clearly at the start of the conversation. Outside the sacrament itself, that conversation is not covered by the sacramental seal, so tell the priest plainly whether you want to confess or simply want his counsel. Our article on whether priests judge what you confess explains the difference in more detail.

Sources

• Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§1461–1467
• Code of Canon Law, canons 964, 966, 978–981, 983–984, 986, 991
• Code of Canon Law, canon 1386 §1 (Book VI, as revised in 2021)
• Misericordiae Vultus, §17 (Pope Francis, 2015)
• Evangelii Gaudium, §44 (Pope Francis, 2013)
• Douay-Rheims Bible — Luke 15:7, 15:20–22, 19:5–8, 7:47–48; John 20:22–23; Matthew 9:12; 2 Kings (2 Samuel) 12:13; Psalm 50:19; 1 John 1:9
• Do Priests Judge What You Confess? (Catholic Repository)