father confessor

English

Noun

father confessor (plural father confessors)

1. (Roman Catholicism) A priest who hears confession and then gives absolution; a confessor.
2. (by extension) A person who listens to others and gives them advice on private matters; a spiritual guide.
   • 1976 March 27, F. Dudley Hart, “History of the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis”, in British Medical Journal, volume 1, number 6012, →DOI, →JSTOR, page 763:

     Anybody can cure a curable disease if he happens to have the right drug at hand, but the treatment of a condition for which there is no positive cure makes much greater demands on the doctor, who has to be practical pharmacologist, human being, psychiatrist, and father confessor—he has, in fact, to be a proper physician in the fullest sense of the word.

Translations

a priest who hears confession and then gives absolution — see confessor

person who listens to others and gives them advice on private matters; spiritual guide

• Finnish: henkinen opas
• French: guide spirituel m, conseiller spirituel m, directeur de conscience (fr) m
• Polish: powiernik (pl) m

Further reading

• “father confessor”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “father confessor”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.