The penitential rite of the Mass — the Church's communal confession to almighty God and the whole company of heaven.
Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, et vobis fratres, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere et omissione: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem, omnes Angelos et Sanctos, et vos, fratres, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum.
I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.
At the Penitential Act of every Mass that uses this option.
The Confiteor in its earliest form was a private prayer of the priest before approaching the altar, recorded in 8th-century sacramentaries. By the 11th century it had grown into a dialogue between priest and server; in the Tridentine Missal (1570) it was a full exchange in two parts (priest, then server with people) before the Introit.
The Pauline reform of 1969 united the prayer for priest and faithful in a single recitation at the start of Mass, with the option of two other penitential rites. The current English translation (2011) restored the threefold 'through my fault' that had been dropped in the 1970s translation.
