On the 10th March, 2025, the Major Penitentiary communicated to the Procurator General of the Order the granting to our Order of the extension of the special faculties: this is the "regulatory" granting of the faculties, which the General Minister can extend to the priests to whom he intends to delegate them.
The Rescript of the Apostolic Penitentiary (Prot. N. 523/25) establishes that this grant includes the faculty to absolve penitents from all censures, excommunications and interdicts, not declared nor reserved, and also the faculty to dispense, for just cause, from private vows, even commuting them with works of piety or penance, provided that no one's rights are infringed.
With regard to "faculties", it must be kept in mind that with the Apostolic Letter Misericordia et misera the Holy Father extended to all confessors the faculty to absolve from cases of abortion, whilst the dispensation from irregularities arising from cooperation in procuring abortion - both with regard to ordination and with regard to the exercise of the ministry - remains reserved to the Apostolic Penitentiary. Furthermore, the cases reserved to the Holy See (which are the delicta graviora) continue to be so, for which confessors must always necessarily resort to the Penitentiary, aware that the response is ordinarily assured within 24 hours.
The Minister General with a decree of the 14th April, 2025, following the indications of the Apostolic Penitentiary, delegates the aforementioned faculties no longer to all friars, but to the following friars of the Order, provided that they are approved by the local Ordinary to hear confessions: provincial ministers and vicars, guardians, parish priests, rectors of Franciscan sanctuaries and churches, penitentiaries and friars who have the office of confessors in the aforementioned sanctuaries and churches, chaplains of prisons, hospitals and retirement homes.
Read the Decree by the Apostolic Penitentiary: Latino and Italiano (original) - English e Español (translations)
Read the Decree by the Minister General: Italiano (original) - English and Español (translations
