A Papal Communal Penance Service....?

This comes from Catholic News Service, the USCCB news agency.

Vatican announces papal liturgies, including communal penance service
Pope Benedict XVI's schedule of public liturgies through April includes a Lenten communal penitential service -- a papal first -- but no canonization or beatification ceremonies.

Releasing the pope's January-April liturgical calendar Dec. 31, the Vatican announced the pope will preside over a communal penance service followed by private confessions and individual absolution April 11, the Tuesday of Holy Week.

The schedule did not say whether the pope would be among the priests hearing confessions during the celebration in St. Peter's Basilica. Pope John Paul II made a tradition of hearing confessions on Good Friday at the basilica.

While one certainly understands that some may see this as a vindication of sorts of the numerous abuses of communal penance services in the past, I suspect that by this event the Holy Father will confirm the previous corrections made of the past abuses while demonstrating the proper manner in which communal penance services are practiced - including the necessity of individual auricular confession and absolution after such a service.

We should understand that a Communal Penance Service "shows more clearly the ecclesial nature of penance." (No. 22, Praenotanda of the Ordo Paenitentiae). It also helps prepare a large group of penitents for several confessors to hear individual confessions and exposes a greater number of individual to (hopefully) a proper examination of conscience while encouraging more Catholics to seek the generous reconciliation and healing which our Lord bids us to receive.