London - Section 85 of the Crime and Policing Act 2026 imposes a duty in England to report to the authorities any suspected child sexual abuse that a person becomes aware of while carrying out a “relevant activity”. Section 85(12) defines that term by reference to just two sources: “regulated activity” under the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, which covers teaching, supervision and care of children in structured settings such as schools and healthcare services, and a list of additional activities set out in Part 2 of Schedule 12 to the Act. The only express exceptions, contained in sections 88 to 91, concern consensual sexual activity between children, a specific offence committed by a child, disclosures made by one child about another child, and services which the Secretary of State may exempt by regulations where they relate to children’s welfare and confidentiality. None of those four provisions mentions religion. Hearing a confession simply does not appear anywhere in the legislation - either as an activity covered by the duty or as an exception to it.
It is an omission, not a choice. Last May, the Home Office wrote to the National Secular Society stating that the new provision would apply to everyone carrying out relevant activities with children, including in religious settings, with no exceptions based on where disclosures were received, including in the confessional. In its final report in 2022, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse had called for an absolute duty, with no religious exemptions, explicitly referring to sacramental confession. The Act as passed delivers on neither commitment: the technical mechanism chosen by Parliament - tying the duty to the concept of “regulated activity” - leaves confession outside its scope by definition, rather than through any expressly stated decision. Bishop Robert Springett, the Church of England’s lead bishop for safeguarding, confirmed the point unequivocally at last month’s General Synod: confession is not “regulated activity” for the purposes of the new law.
The protection currently afforded to the “sacramental seal” in England does not stem from the State recognising the particular nature of confession. It exists because of a technical gap in the definition, and a technical amendment could just as easily remove it. Section 95 of the Crime and Policing Act itself gives the Secretary of State the power, by regulations, to amend both the exceptions and the list of relevant activities in Part 2 of Schedule 12. A single line added to that Schedule would be enough to bring the hearing of a confession, or a comparable pastoral conversation, within the activities subject to the duty.
Canon 983 §1 of the Code of Canon Law declares the sacramental seal inviolable: it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray a penitent in any way, by words or in any other manner and for any reason. Canon 984 extends that protection beyond simple non-disclosure: a confessor may not use knowledge acquired in confession to the detriment of the penitent, even where there is no risk of disclosure. Anyone who directly violates the seal incurs a latae sententiaeexcommunication reserved to the Apostolic See, under canon 1386 §1 of Book VI, revised in 2021 - one of the gravest sanctions known to canon law, reserved for a very small number of offences.
The theological basis for this is not professional confidentiality of the kind that might apply to a lawyer or a doctor. In confession, the penitent does not address the priest as a private individual entrusted with information: through the priest, the penitent addresses God. The confessor listens in persona Christi, not in his own name, and what he hears does not belong to him in any sense that would give him the right to use or disclose it - not even for an end which, viewed from outside, would appear unquestionably good. This is why the tradition of the Church venerates figures such as St John of Nepomuk, who was thrown into the Vltava in 1393 after refusing to reveal to the King of Bohemia what the Queen had said in confession: a principle which the Church has always treated as absolute, regardless of who demands disclosure or how legitimate the request may be.
It should also be noted that this inviolability does not amount, as is sometimes suggested, to permission for a general silence over abuse. The provisions of the motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi, updated in 2023, require clerics and religious to report to the competent ecclesiastical authority any information concerning abuse that comes to their attention - with the sole exception, expressly provided for in the text itself, of information received by a confessor by reason of the sacrament. The seal is therefore not a blanket exemption: it is a narrow boundary drawn around a single sacramental act, leaving untouched every other channel through which information may be obtained - pastoral conversations, confidences shared outside confession, direct observation - to which the duty to report, under ecclesiastical law and now also under civil law wherever the legislation provides for it, applies in full.
It is therefore particularly important for the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom to take a public stand in defence of the sacramental seal.
