confessor
n.n. a person who tells their sins to a priest or a religious leader. This is usually part of a religious ceremony to help the person feel better about their mistakes.
n. a person who makes a formal confession of sins to a priest or other religious authority. Often used in the context of Catholic or other Christian traditions.
The priest listened to the confessor's story.
After years of silence, the former politician became a confessor for young people struggling with their own moral dilemmas.
The role of the confessor is not merely to judge the penitent but to offer a path to reconciliation with the divine through the act of confession.
From Middle English confessor, confessour, from Anglo-Norman confessour, and its source, Latin cōnfessor, from cōnfiteor (“confess, admit, acknowledge”). By surface analysis, confess + -or.