The Confession

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.  . . .”

It was a Saturday lunchtime, and I was doing my regular stint behind the confessional box screen, when unseen people nervously recited their offences, and I dished out the punishments, normally a number of Hail Mary’s to recite, after which I sent them on their way with a comforting “Go now and sin no more. . .”

“Father I have killed someone.”

What? 

It took a while for the shock to sink in.

Taking the confessional was just one of the things I had to get accustomed to in this strange life I was getting used to as a newly qualified Catholic parish priest. 

Me!  A pretty average run-of-the-mill bloke being asked to pass judgement on people’s behaviour, when I’m sure I’ve got more than my share of faults and failures.  Then I had to get used to folks in their seventies calling me, a twenty-five-year-old man, ‘Father’, and having to wear a stupid cassock and cissy looking robes for services and reciting things by rote that I didn’t even understand.  But I guess you have to take the rough with the smooth.  

What mattered was that I was doing God’s work, as I saw it. I was helping the community in practical ways too, and I was already involved with the local volunteer charities for the homeless, and last night I’d been lucky enough to be able to give some comfort to an old lady whose husband had just died, so I was at least making a difference.  After the years of studying I was finally able to do what I really wanted to do, which was to try and help people in trouble and to follow God’s teachings and do the best I possibly could to try and make the world a kinder place.

The crimes I was listening to were usually pretty standard fare.  A man who had got bladdered on a Friday night and bashed up his wife.  Someone who stole from their employer, another who gambled away household money and lied about it.  Oodles of adultery. There were even some funny ones, such as the voluptuous married lady who’d enjoyed carnal relations with her milkman, who had allegedly also had sex with most of the women in her street “All Apart from that stuck up cow on the corner.”

But on this particular Saturday my latest confession was anything but funny.

“I’ve killed a girl,” the man behind the screen went on, to my horror.  “She was on the game, you see, one of those girls. I wanted to have sex with her but something terrible came over me, I couldn’t stop myself, I had to kill her.  And the worst of it is, I’m afraid I’ll go down to that red light district and kill again.”

Fuck no!  Nothing had prepared me for something like this!

“Listen.”  My throat had almost closed, I was in shock.  “I cannot give God’s forgiveness unless you go to the police,”  I told him, forgetting the script and just winging it.  “God will forgive any sin, but only if you are genuinely sorry, and only if you accept the consequences of your actions.  Which means I must insist that you go to the police.” 

I realised that in my shock I’d sounded aggressive, so I changed tack.  “Look, you’re not alone. I’ll help you.  I’ll come with you.  I’ll help you tell your family, I’ll help you find a lawyer.  But we must go now to the police and tell them what you’ve done.”

“NO!”  he yelled, sounding as desperate as he must have felt.  “I couldn’t face the humiliation, a trial, going to prison.  No, I won’t go to the police.  Maybe I should kill myself.”

“Suicide is a mortal sin.”

“And murdering a girl isn’t?  I’m already fucked, Father, can’t you see that?  I appreciate your concern, but you can’t help me.  I was a fool to come here, I just I wanted to tell someone.”

“I’m glad you came here, I want to help you,”  I begged him.  “Wait, you must go to the police,  you really have to—”

But he was gone, running out of the church.  I leapt out from my little cubby hole and caught a glimpse of him leaving, and recognised the man’s face.  I knew him by sight – he was a regular in the congregation, always sitting near the back, a middle aged, quiet, self effacing, totally unremarkable man, the kind of fella you don’t normally notice. 

Yet I wasn’t dreaming.  He’d just told me that he’d killed a prostitute.  And that he might kill again. 

Of course I had to stop him. 

But how?

I hadn’t heard of any murder, but maybe the body hadn’t yet been found? 

I had to do something about it.  I just had to. 

Now, here’s the hard part.  Okay, if you’re not a Catholic I can guess what you’re thinking,  That if lives are at risk, then any rational person would say, to hell with rules, I have to go to the police and report this man. 

But to me, a committed Catholic priest, it’s a much much bigger deal than that.  The creed specifically states:

‘Priests may not reveal what they have learned during confession to anyone, even under the threat of their own death or that of others.’ 

My religion, the religion I have given my life to uphold, states that if I break this rule I will be excommunicated.  Losing my life’s work as a priest, and also my right to worship God as I want to, indeed must do.  And, also possibly being eternally damned for contravening God’s laws.

But did my life or indeed my own soul matter, when I had it in my power to save a girl’s life?

Trouble was I didn’t even know the man’s name, or anything about him, so I couldn’t go and find him, and beg or cajole him to go to the police. 

In the end, I knew there was only one thing I could do: bank on seeing him again.  In the meantime, all I could do was pray for guidance.

And luck was with me, so maybe God heard my prayer.  Because next day at church I saw him at the back of the room, trying to keep out of sight. 

I managed to leave the service early, slipped around the back, keeping the exit door in sight.  I waited until he came out, on his own luckily, and then I followed him.

Then, when we were a few blocks away from the church I overtook him and grabbed his arm.

“I’m not giving up,”  I snapped, keeping him held tight.  “You must come with me now, to the police station and tell them what you’ve done.  No arguments!”

Then he began to cry. 

Thank goodness.  That was when I knew I’d won.

“Yes, you’re right” he blubbered on.  “I’ve been agonising about it all last night.  But it’s the only thing to do.  I’ll tell them everything.  Thank you, Father, you were right to make me do this, thank you so much.”

“Come on back to the church and we can go in my car.”  Before you change your mind, I thought.

Once in the police station, with the man – he’d told me his name was Alan Biddlehouse – everything went smoothly.  After all the kerfuffle of him yelling about his guilt to Sergeant Troy, the uniformed policeman at the counter, I watched him go meekly behind the desk and walk away with another officer.  And, absurdly, I felt this strange  sensation of an anticlimax. 

Sergeant Troy was watching Alan walk away, shaking his head slowly.  He hadn’t said a word since he’d met us on arrival and listened to Alan’s garbled confession, and then made phone calls and finally summoned someone to take him away for questioning.

“Well I suppose the best thing I can do now is go and talk to his family,”  I said to the benevolent looking Sergeant Troy when we were alone.  “Are you allowed to give me his address?”

“Dear me, Father, I think you’ve done more than enough already, you don’t need to do that.”  He looked at his watch.  “Good-oh, we’re in luck! I’m going home myself in ten minutes, I’ll drive Alan back to his mum’s house.” His eyes lit up with delight.  “Yes, I’ll enjoy that, his mum’s a dear old soul, and she makes this marvellous chocolate cake, goes lovely with a nice cup of tea.”

“Drive him home?”  I said in astonishment.  “But he’s committed a murder!  Surely you’ll remand him in custody?”

He smiled.  “You’re the new priest at St Andrew’s, aren’t you?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Fact is, you don’t know Alan like we do.”  His smile became even broader.  “I’ll let you into a little police trade secret.”  He tapped the side of his nose and moved closer.  “When he was a much younger man, he shot and killed the famous journalist Jill Dando in London. Before that he was one of the masterminds behind the Brinks-Mat Gold Robbery.  And you know the taxi driver, John whatsisface, the one who was convicted of raping all those girls in his cab?  According to Alan, John was innocent, and it was Alan who was the rapist.  And he knows all about the Hatton Garden jewellery heist because he planned it.  And in case you’re still worried, I double checked just now and there’ve been no reports of missing girls in the last fortnight, and our old mate Alan has never even been seen in our red light district – we’d know if he had, our officers regularly patrol there, and we all know Alan.  If Alan Biddlehouse even set eyes on a girl in a sexy short skirt he’d run a mile!”

He began to laugh.  I joined in. 

“Do you know something, Father?”  he went on.  “Frankly I think you’ve played a blinder, making him come in here.  It  must’ve been awful for you, not being able to break the sacredness of the confessional, and deciding you had to persuade him to hand himself in, and then frogmarching him in here when you thought he was a desperate murderer who might turn around and cut your throat.  It must have been a terrible ordeal for you.”

“It was.”

“Can I ask you a question, Father?”

“Sure.”

“Do you reckon God’s got a sense of humour?”

“Shall I tell you a little Catholic trade secret?”  I leaned towards him and mirrored his nose-tapping.  “I promise you that God is laughing his socks off right now!”

(image courtesy of Christelle Prieur from Pixabay)