A website to help confession: YoMeConfieso.es is born

There is a lot of talk lately about the Catholic turn, but there is a turn that is not seen and is not part of the statistics. Only the priests who sit regularly in the confessional know about it. Many of them are no longer surprised that every week there are people - young and not so young - who sit in the confessional after a long time without receiving the sacrament. 

Far from being isolated cases, the phenomenon is repeated frequently. “Every week we see people who have not gone to confession for five, ten or fifteen years,” he says. Penitents must also be helped to “distinguish between what is a sin, what is a feeling or a wound; and, of course, the parts of the rite and the answers they must give must also be explained to them,” he adds. 

To remedy these shortcomings, Javier - one of the priests behind the “10 minutes with Jesus”.”- has launched the website “I Confess”which guides the penitent through a complete examination of conscience, in addition to facilitating 

The idea was not born from a technological laboratory or from a planned pastoral strategy, but from daily experience. “It comes from nothing, from the experience that people don't know how to confess,” Javier explains naturally. 

How the tool works

The Yo Me Confieso proposal does not consist of a conversational artificial intelligence, but of a guided system of questions and answers. The user selects areas in which he/she thinks he/she has failed and the website saves the answers and then prepares a summary among some 150 sinful categories.

“Depending on the answers you give, the web asks you more specific questions,” explains Javier. At the end of the process, the platform prepares a script ready to be used in the confession, so that you can easily remember everything you wanted to confess”.

Privacy and practical use

One of the usual concerns with tools of this type is privacy. Javier insists that the system works locally: “There is no AI behind it collecting data, nor does it require identification in any way”. 

Even so, he recognizes that each user can adapt its use: from taking the cell phone to the confessional to copying the content into another application or writing it down on paper.

“People already write things down on their cell phones,” he says. “And whoever doesn't trust it, just put it on paper and that's it.”.

Beyond technique: educating the conscience

The objective of the website is not only to facilitate the process, but also to educate. One of the key points is to help distinguish between feeling and acting. “You can't control your emotions, but you can control the outward manifestation,” he explains. This distinction, he says, “unloads a lot” on those who carry blame that does not correspond to them.

It also seeks to order the experience: from the basic mechanics - what to say, how to begin - to the content of the confession. “We live in a society where many people come to God and need you to take them by the hand. Very much by the hand,” he sums up.

Although the website is already operational, its creator conceives it as an open project. Among future improvements, he plans to add educational content, audio or age-based options.