Do you prefer Confessing face to face or through a private confessional grid/screen?

[Edmundus1581]

I can see how it would definitely be a shock if she wasn’t expecting it. I would think there would have been someone into depression before the conversion was made, but maybe she wasn’t a parishioner.

You’ve just reminded me of the rest of the story. Yes, if she was a parishioner she would probably have known if the conversion. This young priest added the comment that she’d probably traveled from another parish specifically to attend this confessional and it must have been a shock to her!

All this was thirty five years ago, when I was young and on a retreat for men enquiring about the religious life and this young priest was leading the retreat. He must be over sixty now but I always think of him as I knew him then. How time flies.