Pope Francis to wash feet of young inmates on Holy Thursday
Pope to wash feet of 12 young people in Casal del Marmo penal institute during afternoon mass on day before Good Friday
John Paul II kisses the foot of a clergyman during the Holy Thursday ceremony at St Peter's Basilica during his time as pope. Photograph: Plinio Lepri/AP
He has already made himself known as the pope who takes the bus, pays his bills and wears his old shoes. Now Pope Francis has taken another step towards solidifying his image as the people's pontiff by announcing plans to celebrate a major pre-Easter ceremony in a youth detention centre.
In a statement, the Vatican said that, for the first time in living memory, the afternoon mass on Holy Thursday – the day before Good Friday – would be held in neither St Peter's basilica nor the basilica of St John in Lateran.
Instead, it would be celebrated by the new Argentinian pope in the chapel of the Casal del Marmo penal institute for minors and young adults on the outskirts of Rome. During the ceremony the 76-year-old pontiff will wash the feet of 12 inmates, a ritual designed to commemorate Jesus's gesture to his disciples after the Last Supper.
The Vatican said the ceremony would be a continuation of Francis's practice as archbishop of Buenos Aires, when he celebrated the mass of the Lord's Supper in "a context characterised by simplicity", including prisons, hospitals or shelters for the poor.
Francis's predecessor, Benedict XVI, visited the Casal del Marmo in 2007, but not for the Holy Thursday mass. For the first two years of his pontificate the German pope washed the feet of 12 lay people from the diocese of Rome, but since 2008 he chose a dozen priests for the ceremony.
John Paul II, who also kept the practice of feet-washing to men of the cloth for most of his reign, did start off with similar efforts to Francis. In 1980 he chose a group of homeless men, but the mass was held in St John in Lateran – the bishop of Rome's cathedral church.
In the week since his election Francis has endeared himself to many by bringing to the Vatican a simple aesthetic dubbed "Bergoglio style" by the Italian press.
It remains to be seen where Francis will chose to live: at the moment he is still in the St Martha house where cardinals stayed during conclave while renovation work is carried out on the Apostolic Palace. Upon seeing the grandeur of the large papal apartment last week, however, he was reported to have remarked that there was "room for 300 people".
This got me thinking. About the theme of my blog. Simplicity. And this man is the very definition of the word. He is the POPE. The most holiest, closest thing to Jesus we have on the planet, according to Catholics. However, he continues to live the life of a simple man. He is a refreshing new change to the Catholic church; one that I feel should have come sooner. Personally, I completely lost interest in the church after Benedict became pope. I felt that he actually undid a lot of what Pope John Paul II did. The new rituals during mass and the reformed prayers, just made the church seem more old-fashioned than it already was.
I feel really hopeful that Pope Francis will revolutionize the vatican and the way things are done over there. I hope that he will be strong enough to resist anybody contending with his simplistic way of being and his humility. He needs to bring in humility to the politics and corruption that the Vatican has become. Pope Francis, we are all rooting for you!
I feel really hopeful that Pope Francis will revolutionize the vatican and the way things are done over there. I hope that he will be strong enough to resist anybody contending with his simplistic way of being and his humility. He needs to bring in humility to the politics and corruption that the Vatican has become. Pope Francis, we are all rooting for you!
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