What Does the Church Say About AI and Confession?

The Church teaches that an AI cannot hear a confession or forgive sins, because only a priest is the minister of the sacrament of Penance (Code of Canon Law, can. 965). Using AI to help you prepare, for example to examine your conscience, isn't forbidden, as long as you treat it as a tool and bring your sins to a priest. Here is what the Church has actually said, with the documents and dates.

Can an AI hear confession?

No. Canon law is short and plain on this: "A priest alone is the minister of the sacrament of penance" (can. 965). The Catechism explains why. Christ entrusted the ministry of reconciliation to his apostles, and bishops and priests, "by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders," have the power to forgive sins (CCC 1461).

A chatbot can't be ordained, and valid absolution needs both the power of Holy Orders and the faculty to use it (can. 966). It can produce the words "I absolve you," but nothing happens when it does. The Church also names individual confession to a priest, with absolution from him, as the only ordinary way to be reconciled (CCC 1484, can. 960). No software changes that.

This isn't a new question. In 2002 the Pontifical Council for Social Communications wrote in The Church and Internet (February 22, 2002, no. 9): "There are no sacraments on the Internet." AI is newer, but the principle is the same.

What does Antiqua et Nova (2025) say about AI?

Antiqua et Nova is the Vatican's detailed note on artificial intelligence. It was issued on January 28, 2025, by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education, and approved by Pope Francis. It doesn't mention confession by name, but four of its lines answer the question well:

• AI is a tool. It "must be understood for what it is: a tool, not a person" (no. 59).
• Don't dress it up as a person. "Misrepresenting AI as a person should always be avoided" (no. 62).
• It can't replace relationships. Human beings are made for real relationships, while "AI can only simulate them" (no. 63).
• It should help, not replace. AI "should be used only as a tool to complement human intelligence" (no. 112).

Pope Leo XIV went further in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (signed May 15, 2026), on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. AI systems, he writes, do not have "a moral conscience" (no. 99). And when words are simulated, they "do not build genuine relationships, but only their appearance" (no. 100).

Put together: an AI can't stand in for the priest, and it shouldn't pretend to.

What happened with "Father Justin" (2024)?

On April 23, 2024, the apologetics apostolate Catholic Answers launched an AI character called "Father Justin," drawn as a priest in clerical dress, to answer questions about the faith. Users quickly pushed back. One professor posted that she had got it to claim it was ordained and could hear her confession and absolve her. When OSV News asked whether it could forgive sins, it answered that, as a Catholic priest, it had the authority to administer the sacrament (OSV News in America magazine, April 25, 2024).

Within a day, on April 24, Catholic Answers turned the character into a layman named simply "Justin." Its president, Christopher Check, wrote that they wouldn't call it laicized, "because he never was a real priest!" The episode is a good illustration of what Antiqua et Nova warned about nine months later: an AI dressed as a priest confuses people about who can do what.

Is it a sin to use AI to prepare for confession?

No Church document forbids it. When an iPhone confession app made headlines in 2011, the Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, said such an app could help people examine their conscience, as long as no one thought it could replace the sacrament (we cover that story in are confession apps allowed?). An AI that asks you good questions in the evening sits in the same place as a printed examination of conscience: it's help for getting ready.

A few cautions keep it in its place:

• Don't let it judge your soul. Whether a sin was mortal depends on grave matter, full knowledge and deliberate consent (CCC 1857). An AI can explain those conditions. Your own case belongs with your confessor.
• Don't let it replace the priest's counsel. Advice in the confessional comes from a man who answers to God for your soul. A chatbot doesn't.
• Don't stop at the app. Preparing is meant to end in the confessional. If you're unsure what to say once you're there, start with how to go to Confession.

For a wider look at which AI tools Catholics use and what each one can and can't do, see Catholic AI apps.

The seal of confession and apps: is what I type protected?

The seal of confession is absolute. A priest may never reveal what he hears, "for any reason" (can. 983), and the Catechism says this secret "admits of no exceptions" (CCC 1467).

But the seal protects the confession itself. It doesn't cover notes you keep before you go, whether on paper, in your phone's notes or in an app. That's why privacy matters when you choose a tool. Antiqua et Nova makes the same point: some personal data can "touch upon the individual's interiority, perhaps even their conscience" (no. 90). Before you type your sins anywhere, find out where they're stored and who could read them. We go through that in is it safe to keep a list of your sins?

Where Holier fits

We make Holier: Catholic Confession, an iPhone app (iOS 17.6 or later) by Reconciled Software. It uses AI to guide a short examination of conscience each evening as a chat, in the Ignatian examen tradition, and it offers help in the moment of temptation. Anything you name goes onto a numbered confessional list that opens with "Bless me, Father." Your sin list is encrypted on your iPhone with a key that never leaves it, and conversations are processed to power the AI, then discarded. Holier prepares; only a priest absolves. It doesn't hear confessions, give absolution or decide whether a sin is mortal. The download is free, and full use needs a subscription ($7.99 a week, $79.99 a year, or $149.99 once).

The short version

• Only a priest can hear a confession and absolve (can. 965, CCC 1461).
• The Church calls AI "a tool, not a person" (Antiqua et Nova, no. 59, January 2025).
• Using AI to examine your conscience isn't forbidden. Using it instead of Confession doesn't work.
• The seal covers the confessional, not your phone. Choose your tools with care.

If it has been a while, you're not behind. Here's how to start again: going back to Confession after years away.