It is part of the Catholic Church's '24 hours for the Lord' event, which will see priests around the world make themselves specially available to hear the confessions in their diocese.
24 hours for the Lord comes during the Catholic Church's Jubilee Year of Mercy, which is encouraging Christians to reflect on God's mercy to them, and how they can show His mercy to others.
The pontiff commissioned more than a thousand priests, known as 'missionaries of mercy', last month to travel across the world to facilitate the forgiveness of people's sins.
A guidebook issued for priests and parishioners before the 24 hours for the Lord features Pope Benedict XVI's thoughts on why people should go to confession.
The former pontiff said: "Naturally, if you kneel down and with true love for God pray that God forgives you, he forgives you.
"It has always been the teaching of the Church that one, with true repentance - that is, not only in order to avoid punishment, difficulty, but for love of the good, for love of God - asks for forgiveness, he is pardoned by God.
"But there is a second element: sin is not only a "personal" individual thing between myself and God. Sin always has a social dimension, a horizontal one.
"Thus this second dimension of sin, which is not only against God but concerns the community too, demands the sacrament, and the sacrament is the great gift in which through confession, we can free ourselves from this thing and we can really receive forgiveness in the sense of a full readmission to the community of the living Church, of the Body of Christ."
