On the night of December 24th, as tradition dictates, numerous churches in Mallorca will celebrate Matins with the Song of the Sibyl as its central element. Year after year, this ceremony fills the churches with worshippers and curious onlookers eager to experience firsthand one of the most unique expressions of Balearic cultural heritage. The Song of the Sibyl was recognized in 2010 as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. This piece of medieval origin, which symbolically announces the arrival of Judgment Day, continues to resonate on Christmas Eve in different parts of the island and keeps alive a tradition passed down from generation to generation.

Nicolau Pons Llinàs, a Jesuit from Artà, has died at the age of 98. In April 2024, he received the ARA Baleares at the Monti-sion monastery, with the serenity with which he faced the end: "Death doesn't frighten me. I can already be thankful for having reached 97." That conversation, which we now revisit as a tribute, traces a life marked by the Spanish Civil War, exile in Latin America, his sympathy for liberation theology, the conflict with the Society of Jesus, and his courageous denunciation of abuses within the Church.

It must be acknowledged that the Church is improving its facilities, and that today's confessionals are, at first glance, considerably more comfortable than those of the past. In the past, confessionals were usually rather precarious wooden booths, sometimes thickened, within which the priest had to squeeze himself as best he could. For their part, the parishioners almost always had to kneel to one side of the booth, often in full view of everyone, and therefore with their privacy and confidentiality compromised. They chatted quietly through the barred shutter, yes, but the result could hardly be said to be a triumph of discretion: everyone knew whether So-and-so had gone to confession, and then it was all conjecture and rumor. Even spectacular cases could occur, such as that of the confessional at the end of The Regent, which almost literally blew up in the air due to the pressure of the illicit desire that the masterful Fermín de Paso felt for Ana, the protagonist of the novel (The Regent It was a novel that was usually read in high school in the subject of Spanish Language and Literature, I don't know if it is still used).