Egypt's Coptic pope bans phone confessions
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Pope Shenuda III, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Patriarch of Alexandria and the See of St. Mark has banned the faithful from confessing their sins to priests over the telephone because intelligence agents might be listening in. He also said confessions over the Internet were invalid because they might be read by websurfers.
The sacrament of confession, also practiced by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians, is normally a very private conversation between penitent and priest. Priests are strictly bound to respect the privacy of confession, even in the face of threatened punishment, and many countries’ legal systems specifically protect the “seal of the confessional.”
Unlike Roman Catholic confessions, Coptic confessions are done face to face. The Vatican does not recognize confessions by telephone or over the Internet.
Pope Shenuda has also banned monks in Coptic monasteries from using cell phones, adding that monastery administrators were allowed to keep their cell phones.
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