Alfred Hitchcock knew a thing or two about complicated thrillers. Having a murderer confess to a priest - who couldn't betray this trust - was already a familiar plot twist by 1953, when Hitchcock ...

The 1953 Alfred Hitchcock film "I Confess," based on an earlier play, features a priest suspected of murder. He's innocent, and has even heard the murderer's confession—but cannot clear his own name.

“For all who do evil hate the light…so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light …” (John 3:20-21) It was a rainy Sunday in 1969, and my 5-year-old brother ...

“Receive the Holy Spirit,” said the risen Lord to his apostles. “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” The sacrament of Penance, ...

Pope Francis goes to confession during a Lenten penance service in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican March 25, 2022. (Credit: Paul Haring/CNS.) Listen ROME — The sacrament of reconciliation “is not ...

Without doubt, wrote Martin Luther, “;confession of sins is necessary, and in accordance with the divine commandments” But Luther was dead set against the Roman Catholic obligation to confess before ...

The Lenten period for penance started this week with Ash Wednesday, and some Catholic priests are happily bracing for long lines outside the confessional. The faithful across the United States are ...

He was lazy. Only doing what he was supposed to do, what was expected of him as a man of the cloth, was enough. Father Marcelino Antonio Maralit said he was a "mediocre priest." But people looked up ...

Young people wait to go to confession outside St. Anthony's Catholic Church in North Beach, Maryland, April 1, during the coronavirus pandemic. (CNS/Bob Roller) The social distancing measures imposed ...

A restaurant in California has been ordered to pay $140,000 in back wages and damages to employees after it hired a priest to extract workers’ confessions, in what federal investigators are calling ...