But, there isn’t just one priest, rather there are numerous priests. Jesus gave His first and future priests, who were the apostles and their successors, authority to forgive and retain sins when He said, "Peace be to you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you. When He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit! If you forgive anyone’s sins, they have been forgiven them. If you retain anyone’s sins, they have been retained.” (Jn. 20:21-23)
Jesus gave the apostles the power to forgive sins as part of commissioning them to continue His mission, empowering them to declare God’s forgiveness through the Gospel message, recognize spiritual states, and act as His earthly agents, reflecting God’s mercy and establishing the Church’s authority in administering His grace, particularly through the Holy Spirit’s guidance. This authority, often linked to “binding and loosing,” allows them to proclaim who is forgiven through faith and who isn’t, validating God’s work in people’s lives. And, on April 27th, 1947, Jesus showed Maria Valtorta a vision of a scene from His earthly life where she saw and heard Him say to the apostles the following:
Remember that in an organism a hierarchy is required, so that it may be really active and wholesome, that is, someone who commands, someone who transmits orders, and those who obey. That is what happens in the courts of kings, as well as in religions. From our Hebrew religion to the others, even if they are so impure, there is always a chief, his ministers, the servants of the ministers, and lastly the believers. A pontiff cannot act by himself. A king cannot act by himself. And their dispositions concern only human contingencies, or the formalism of rites. . . Yes. Unfortunately, now, also in the Mosaic religion, there is nothing left but the formalism of rites, the continuation of the movements of a device that goes on making the same gestures, even now that the spirit of the gestures is dead. Dead forever. Their Divine Enlivener, He Who gave import to the rites, has withdrawn from them. And the rites are gestures, nothing else. Gestures that any histrion could mime on the stage of an amphitheatre.
Woe, when a religion dies, and from a real living power becomes a clamorous exterior pantomime, an empty thing behind a painted scenery, behind pompous garments, the movements of devices performing certain actions, just as a key activates a spring, but neither key nor spring is conscious of what they do. Woe! Ponder! Remember this truth and tell your successors about it, so that it may be known throughout ages. The fall of a planet is less frightening than the fall of religion. If the sky should be depopulated of its stars and planets, it would not be for peoples as bad a misfortune as if they remained without religion. God would provide with provident power for the needs of men, because God can do everything for those who, in a wise way, or in the way that their ignorance knows, seek and love the Divinity in a right spirit. But if the day should come when men no longer loved God, because the priests of every religion had made only an empty pantomime of it, as they were the first not to believe in their religion, woe betide the Earth!
Now, if I say so for those religions that are impure, as some have come through partial revelation to a wise person, some derive from the instinctive need of man to create a faith for himself to nourish his soul to love a god—as this need is the strongest incentive of man, the permanent state of research for Him Who is, and Who is wanted by the spirit even if the proud intellect refuses to pay homage to any god, even if man, unaware of the soul, is unable to give a name to such need that stirs within him—what shall I say for this religion that I have given you, for this one that bears My Name, for this one of which I have created you pontiffs and priests, for this one that I order you to propagate all over the world? For this religion Unique, True, Perfect, Immutable in the Doctrine taught by Me, the Master, completed by the continuous teaching of Him Who will come, the Holy Spirit, the Most Holy Guide for My Pontiffs and for those who will help them, second chiefs in the various Churches created in the various regions where My Word will be asserted. These Churches, although various in number, will not be different in thought, but will be one thing only with the Church, as with their individual parts they will form the great building, greater and greater, the great new Temple, that with its pavilions will reach all the corners of the earth. Not different in thought, nor contrasting with one another, but united, brotherly to one another, all subjected to the Head of the Church, to Peter, and to his successors until the end of time.
And those that for any reason should separate from the Mother Church, would be members cut off, no longer nourished with the mystic blood that is Grace coming from Me, the divine Head of the Church. Like prodigal sons, separated through their own will from the paternal house, in their short-lived wealth and constant and graver and graver misery, they would be blunting their spiritual intellects by means of too heavy foods and wines, and then they would languish eating the bitter acorns of unclean animals until they returned to the paternal house, saying with contrite hearts: “We have sinned. Father, forgive us and open the doors of your abode to us.” Then, whether it is a member of a separated Church, or an entire Church— oh! if it were so, but where, when will so many imitators of Me arise, capable of redeeming these entire separated Churches, at the cost of their lives, to make, to remake only one Fold under only one shepherd, as I ardently wish?—then whether it is only one person or an assembly that comes back, open the doors to them.
And those that for any reason should separate from the Mother Church, would be members cut off, no longer nourished with the mystic blood that is Grace coming from Me, the divine Head of the Church. Like prodigal sons, separated through their own will from the paternal house, in their short-lived wealth and constant and graver and graver misery, they would be blunting their spiritual intellects by means of too heavy foods and wines, and then they would languish eating the bitter acorns of unclean animals until they returned to the paternal house, saying with contrite hearts: “We have sinned. Father, forgive us and open the doors of your abode to us.” Then, whether it is a member of a separated Church, or an entire Church - oh! if it were so, but where, when will so many imitators of Me arise, capable of redeeming these entire separated Churches, at the cost of their lives, to make, to remake only one Fold under only one shepherd, as I ardently wish? - then whether it is only one person or an assembly that comes back, open the doors to them.
Be fatherly. Consider that all of you, for one hour or for many, perhaps for years, were, individually, prodigal sons enveloped in concupiscence. Do not be hard on those who repent. Remember! Remember! Many of you ran away twenty two days ago. And was your running away perhaps not an abjuration of your love for Me? Therefore, as I received you as soon as you, repentant, came to Me, do the same yourselves. Do everything I did. That is My command. You lived with Me for three years. You know My deeds and My thoughts. When, in future, you will find yourselves in front of a case to be decided, look back to the time when you were with Me and behave as I behaved. You will never go wrong. I am the living perfect example of what you have to do.
And remember also that I did not refuse Myself even to Judas of Kerioth. . . A priest must try to save, by all possible means. And let love always prevail, among the means used to save. Consider that I was not unaware of Judas’ horror. . . But, overcoming all disgust, I treated the wretch as I treated John. You. . . you will often be spared the bitterness of knowing that nothing is of any use to save a beloved disciple… And you will therefore be able to work without the tiredness that affects one, when one knows that everything is useless. . . One must work even then. . . always. . . until everything is accomplished… (The Poem of the Man-God: Vol. 5)
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
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