Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
In this picture made available by Vatican Media Pope Francis washes the feet of the inmates of Rome's penitentiary of Casal del Marmo, Thursday, April 6, 2023. (Vatican Media handout via AP)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — In a Holy Thursday ritual symbolizing humility, Pope Francis washed and dried the feet of a dozen residents of a Rome juvenile prison, assuring them of their dignity and telling them “any of us” can fall into sin.

The Casal del Marmo facility on the outskirts of Rome is the same juvenile prison where Francis performed the first feet-washing ritual of his papacy, demonstrating his belief that the Catholic Church should give attention to people living on society’s margins.

On Thursday, Francis repeated the ritual on 10 male and two female residents who are serving time at the facility. He leaned over and poured water on one foot of each, then used a white towel to gently pat the foot dry before kissing it.

When Francis looked up at them in turn to smile, they shook his hand and kissed it. Many of the young people whispered into the pope’s ear, and he chatted with them briefly in return.

In a Holy Thursday ritual symbolizing humility, Pope Francis washed and dried the feet of a dozen residents of a Rome juvenile prison, assuring them of their dignity and telling them “any of us” can fall into sin.

The ritual recalls the foot-washing Jesus performed on his 12 apostles at their last supper together before he would be taken away to be crucified.

Jesus “washes all our feet,” Francis told several dozen residents assembled in the prison chapel. “He knows all our weaknesses,’’ the pope said in a completely improvised homily.

Among the 12, six were minors while the others had become adults while serving their sentences. The dozen included a Muslim from Senegal, as well as young people from Romania, Russia and Croatia, the Vatican said.

Francis explained that the foot-washing was “not folklore” but a “gesture which announces how we should be toward one another.” He lamented that “others profit off each other, (there is) so much injustice...so many ugly things.”

Still, he said, “any one of us can slip” and fall from grace. The foot-washing “confers on us the dignity of being sinners.” The lesson, he added, should be to “help one another, so life becomes better.”

The pontiff, who has a chronic knee problem, navigated the small spaces of the chapel either unaided or with the help of a cane, although he used a wheel chair to leave after the roughly 90-minute appearance.

On Saturday, Francis was discharged from a Rome hospital where he was treated for bronchitis. The Vatican said at the time that he would carry out the complete Holy Week schedule, including the Good Friday late-night Way of the Cross procession at Rome’s Colosseum and Easter Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square.

The latest from america

A Homily for the First Sunday of Advent, by Father Terrance Klein
Terrance KleinNovember 29, 2023
Pope Francis joins others in holding a banner during an audience at the Vatican June 5, 2023, with the organizers of the Green & Blue Festival. The banner calls for financing a "loss and damage" fund that was agreed upon at the COP27 U.N. climate conference in 2022. The fund would seek to provide financial assistance to nations most vulnerable and impacted by the effects of climate change. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
With COP28 in the United Arab Emirates imminent, opinion in the developed world on climate change has become deeply polarized. Perhaps exhausted by the digital news cycle, many people have developed compassion fatigue.
David StewartNovember 29, 2023
This 1994 article by Dennis Hamm, S.J., on praying the examen has become a resource in countless classrooms and retreat centers.
Dennis Hamm, SJNovember 29, 2023
Black survivors have been nearly invisible in the Catholic Church sexual abuse crisis — even in Baltimore, home to a historic Black Catholic community that plays an integral role in the nation’s oldest archdiocese.