The Archdiocese of New York is kicking off Lent with a big push for an oft-neglected sacrament, reconciliation. Many churches offered it round-the-clock this weekend. And the New York Times dropped in to see what was going on:

Around midnight Friday, the Rev. Gilbert Luis R. Centina III appeared outside his church in East Harlem, long past the office hours posted on the rectory door, asking people if they wanted to come in and confess their sins.

At that hour, on that sidewalk, with the hood of his robe pulled tight over his head, Father Centina could be described as a faithful disciple of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.

Father Centina approached the men and women standing outside a party being held at the church hall. Dance music blared. Teenagers cursed. The smell of marijuana lingered.

“Mañana,” one woman uninterested in his offer of absolution told him. Eventually, he found someone who said yes, and they stepped inside the rectory of the church, Holy Rosary on East 119th Street, and into his office. A few minutes later, he found someone else. And then another.

It was almost 1 a.m. Saturday, and he planned on hearing more confessions, until sunrise. “Confession,” said Father Centina, the pastor of Holy Rosary, “is the best sermon.”

New York City, a land of sin, and, yes, salvation, is usually open late for one, but not the other. A number of churches keep their doors locked at night, and the priests at many of the city’s Roman Catholic parishes make themselves available for confessions for only a handful of hours each week.

As an alternative, 21 Catholic churches in Manhattan extended hours of confession on Friday and Saturday, hoping to increase parishioners’ participation in one of Catholicism’s most sacred traditions. A majority of the churches involved in the event, called 24 Hours of Confession, offered the sacrament for several extra hours in the morning, afternoon and evening. But a few held overnight marathons, as Father Centina did at Holy Rosary.

At St. John the Baptist on West 31st Street, which hosts an all-night prayer vigil on the first Friday of each month, a wooden confessional was open into the early morning hours, a green light signaling that a priest was available and a compartment was vacant, and a red light noting a confession in progress.

“I feel light,” said Adeline Canasa, 53, a nurse from Woodside, Queens, a regular at the monthly vigil, who confessed about 1:10 a.m. Saturday. “I’ve been carrying this guilty conscience with me. I’m happy inside now.”

The round-the-clock confessions were organized by the Cathedral of St. Patrick Young Adults, a Catholic volunteer group based at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the seat of the Archdiocese of New York. It is the first event of its kind in the archdiocese, organizers and a spokesman for the archdiocese said.

Mario Bruschi, 32, the director of the young adults group, said the inspiration came from churches in the Archdiocese of Chicago, which have held similar events, called 24 Hours of Grace, that have helped revive the rite of confession in recent years. The all-night confessions in Manhattan and other cities coincide with Lent, the period of repentance preceding Easter.

In New York, the event amounted to a holy counterpoint to the old cliché about the city never sleeping. Amid the clamor and bustle of a Friday night in Manhattan, people stepped into little quiet spaces to weigh their wrongs and connect with God. “I think some people might walk into the church not intending to go in the confessional, but they’ll see the green light and feel God is nudging them to confess their sins,” said the Rev. Michael Banks of St. John the Baptist.

You can read the rest at the Times link.