Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa [Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault].

“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa” is a traditional Latin formula of confession from the Roman Catholic liturgy, spoken during the Confiteor (“I confess”) in the Penitential Act of the Mass and in other devotional contexts. The phrase is associated with a gesture of striking the breast as a sign of contrition. It entered wider European culture through centuries of Latin worship and later became a common idiom in many languages for acknowledging personal responsibility or error, sometimes used sincerely and sometimes ironically in secular speech and writing.

Literally meaning “through my fault … through my most grievous fault,” the triple repetition intensifies the speaker’s admission of responsibility. In its liturgical setting, it expresses humility and repentance before God and the community, emphasizing that wrongdoing is not merely accidental but owned by the self. In later secular usage, the phrase often functions as a compact, recognizable shorthand for “I admit I’m to blame,” with the heightened “maxima” sometimes signaling dramatic emphasis, self-reproach, or even tongue-in-cheek overstatement depending on context.

“Mea culpa.”
“Mea maxima culpa.”
“Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.”