9. Concerning the place and confessional for the celebration of the Sacrament, it should be remembered that:

a) “the proper place to hear sacramental confessions is a church or an oratory”,⁽²⁶⁾ though it remains clear that pastoral reasons can justify celebrating the Sacrament in other places.⁽²⁷⁾

b) confessionals are regulated by the norms issued by the respective Episcopal Conferences, who shall ensure that confessionals are located “in an open area” and have “a fixed grille”, so as to permit the faithful and confessors themselves who may wish to make use of them to do so freely.⁽²⁸⁾

I decree that everything I have set down in this Apostolic Letter issued Motu Proprio shall have full and lasting force and be observed from this day forth, notwithstanding any provisions to the contrary. All that I have decreed in this Letter is, by its nature, valid for the venerable Oriental Catholic Churches in conformity with the respective Canons of their own Code.

Given in Rome, at Saint Peter's, on 7 April, the Second Sunday of Easter, the Feast of Divine Mercy, in the year of our Lord 2002, the twenty-fourth of my Pontificate.

JOHN PAUL II