Protect the Seal of Confession

Many priests have in fact have been imprisoned or died in protecting the seal of Confession.

1. The most famous example is Saint John Nepomuk, confessor to Queen Johanna, wife of Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, in the late 14th Century. The paranoid king thought his wife was unfaithful to him and demanded that Father John tell him what his wife confessed and he of course refused. The King escalated the threats of torture and that did not work. Finally he ordered that Father John be bound, thrown off the Charles Bridge in Prague and be drowned.

2. Saint Mateo Correa Magallanes was killed in 1927 in Mexico for refusing to tell General Eulogio Ortiz what condemned prisoners had confessed. After he rejected the General’s order to break the seal, Ortiz put a gun to the side of Father Correa’s head. When the priest responded, “You can do that, but a priest has to guard the seal of confession. I am ready to die,” Ortiz ordered that he be brought to the outskirts of Durango and shot.

3. During the Spanish Civil War, two priests died protecting the seal. Blessed Felipe Císcar Puig heard the confession of a Franciscan friar about to be executed by firing squad in Valencia in 1936. Soldiers demanded he divulge what the friar had told him. Fr. Císcar refused saying, “Do what you want, but I will not reveal the confession. I would die before that.” They were executed together.

4. In the same year, Blessed Fernando Olmedo Reguera, who was ministering to those imprisoned with him in Madrid, was pressured and tortured into revealing what they had said. He refused and was martyred.

As these examples show, tyrants and totalitarians have a particular hatred for the seal of Confession and have tried to break this absolute commitment priests have made to God and to their penitents. They won’t tolerate a greater allegiance than to them and their dictates. Like the ancient Roman emperors used to try to break young Christian virgins by threatening to expose them to brothels if they didn’t capitulate to their whims, so still today some leaders and governments try to break priests’ fidelity by forcing them to violate the confessional seal.