In the fiction book *Emily's Hope*, by Ellen Gable, there is a passage set in 1912 that describes a news article about a priest on board the *RMS Titanic*:

> She glanced down at the newspaper again and re-read the story of the young survivor, Lillie. She was drawn to another survivor’s story, this one a man, who was plucked from the icy waters, nearly frozen to death.  He talked of watching a priest go from frightened passenger to frightened passenger hearing confession and giving absolution in the last moments before the ship sank.

Given that the book is Catholic religious fiction, I presume that the priest was Catholic as well to provide a foil for the character's faith journey, but the passage itself doesn't specify.

Is there any evidence of such a priest on board the Titanic giving the Sacrament of Confession (also known as the [Sacrament of Penance][1]) to as many people as he could as the ship was sinking? Or is this an invention fo the author?

  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrament_of_Penance