To answer your question, I called Father Cyprian Berens, O.F.M., who spent some years as a confessor at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome.
Father Cyprian told me that until the time of Pope Paul VI, there was attached to the doors of all the confessionals in the four major basilicas a rod that looked something like a fishing pole.
Confessors in these basilicas were able to grant an indulgence to anyone who asked for it by kneeling outside the confessional and waiting for a tap on the head or shoulders with the rod.
Under Pope Paul VI, there was a complete revision of indulgences and a new Enchiridion of Indulgences was published.
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