Pope Francis washed the feet of twelve jailed minors today for Holy Thursday.
Two of the 12 were young women and two were Muslim.
The practice was nothing new to Pope Francis who used to celebrate mass at prisons, hospitals and shelters for the poor.
The Catholic Sun reported:
Pope Francis told young inmates that, just as Jesus came to help and serve others, he, too, was at their service as a priest and bishop.
During the evening Mass at Rome’s Casal del Marmo prison for minors, Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 young people of different nationalities and faiths, including at least two Muslims and two women, who are housed at the juvenile detention facility.
The ceremony of washing another’s feet “is important,” the pope said, because it shows that “the person who is most high among us must be at the service of the others.”
It also means that “we have to help one another, each one,” he said during the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper March 28.
The pope broke with a papal Holy Week tradition of celebrating the evening Mass at a Rome basilica.
While the prison Mass marked a first for the modern papacy, the practice was nothing new to Pope Francis who, as archbishop of Buenos Aires, used to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper — which reflects on the call to imitate Christ by serving one another and commemorates Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist — in prisons, hospitals or shelters for the poor and marginalized.
