ROME (OSV News) ─ Pope Leo XIV March 13 asked if Christian leaders who bear responsibility for war have the courage to humbly examine their consciences and seek the sacrament of confession.
He posed the question in a speech about the importance of regularly confessing one's sins.
"One might ask: do those Christians who bear grave responsibility in armed conflicts have the humility and courage to undertake a serious examination of conscience and confess?" the pope said in the Vatican's Clementine Hall.
Pope Leo made the remarks during an audience at the Vatican's Apostolic Palace with participants in the 36th Course on the Internal Forum, an annual training program for priests and seminarians organized by the Apostolic Penitentiary on issues connected with the sacrament of reconciliation.
The pope lamented that too many Catholics are failing to take advantage of the mercy offered through confession.
"It is as if the infinite treasure of the Church's mercy remained 'unused,' due to a widespread inattention among Christians who, not infrequently, remain in a state of sin for a long time rather than approach the confessional with simplicity of faith and heart to receive the gift of the Risen Christ," he said.
Pope Leo noted that the Catholic Church established in 1215 that every Christian is required to make sacramental confession at least once a year, a norm later confirmed by the Second Vatican Council.
Invoking a treatise by St. Augustine, the pope said that acknowledging one's sins is being "'in harmony with God'" because "'God condemns your sins; and if you too condemn them, you unite yourself with God.'"
The sacrament of reconciliation, Pope Leo said, functions as a "laboratory of unity," restoring a person's relationship with God, generating inner peace, infusing sanctifying grace and ultimately fostering reconciliation among people.
"Only a reconciled person is capable of living in a way that is both unarmed and disarming," the pope said. "Whoever lays down the weapons of pride and allows themselves to be continually renewed by God's forgiveness becomes an agent of reconciliation in daily life."
Pope Leo also spoke of what he called a hunger for "inner unity" among younger generations, saying that the "unfulfilled promises of unbridled consumerism" and a "freedom separated from truth" could, through divine mercy, become opportunities for evangelization. "By bringing to light a sense of unfulfillment, they prompt those existential questions to which only Christ can fully answer," he added.
Addressing the future confessors, the pope called the sacrament one of the most exalted tasks a priest could undertake, pointing to St. John Mary Vianney, St. Leopold Mandic, St. Pio of Pietrelcina and Blessed Michal Sopocko as models of how "priests have become saints in the confessional."
"Dear young priests and seminarians, always be keenly aware of the most exalted task that Christ himself, through the Church, entrusts to you: to restore people's unity with God through the celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation," he said.
"A priest's entire life can be fully realized by celebrating this Sacrament assiduously and faithfully."
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Courtney Mares is Vatican editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @catholicourtney.
