How very good that Pope Francis is showing such sensitivity to women who have had an abortion (News, 5 September). Since the bishops of England, Wales and Scotland already allow abortion to be absolved by a priest, would they now show the same sensitivity by once again allowing female as well as male confessors? In Anglo-Saxon England, women monastics routinely acted as confessors well into the seventh century, and across Europe this traditional practice was not entirely expunged until the thirteenth century.It is surely not difficult to imagine a situation in which a woman who has felt compelled to have an abortion might reasonably baulk at the idea of confession to a man. To celebrate the Year of Mercy, heads of women’s religious congregations should once again be authorised to ex