God the Father of mercies,through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins;through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace,and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son,and of the Holy Spirit
At the end of every Confession, the priest raises his hands and recites the above recommended absolution as recommended by the Church(the only necessary words are “I absolve you from your sins). But the priest is not acting on his own authority, he is acting in persona christi capitis. That is Latin for “in the person of Christ the Head” In other words, the presence of Jesus Christ is very real at that moment. Pope Benedict XVI explains this further, “Because in the Church Christ is never absent, the Church is his living Body and he is the Head of the Church, present and active within her. Christ is never absent, on the contrary he is present in a way that is untrammelled by space and time through the event of the Resurrection that we contemplate in a special way in this Easter Season” (taken from his General Audience address on April 14, 2010)