Catholic Churches in Szczecin, north west Poland, will stay open for confession on Thursday and Friday night before Easter.

The clergy in the city hope the event will repeat the immense success of the 24 hours of confession in Chicago in 2007, when 2,500 people came to admit sins to a priest.

“The idea is to reach out to young and middle aged people, who are so busy that they keep postponing coming to confession before Easter until it’s often too late,” Father Grzegorz Adamski, coordinator of the Confessional Night, told Polish Radio.

Originally, three Szczecin churches were to stay open all night, but more and more Catholic shrines in the region are joining the project, as can be seen on the website devoted to it. Priests will hear confessions in turn, for two hours from 10 p.m. till 6 a.m. Flyers and billboards with information about the Confessional Night have appeared throughout Szczecin.

“This is a good idea both from the perspective of the faithful as well as us, priests”, says Tomasz Kancelarczyk, explaining that long queues form for confessionals at this time of the year and there is no time for a proper confession. (kk/pg)