Vatican Metropolis, Holy See:
Pope Francis, who usually pleads for compassion to prisoners, washed the ft of 12 incarcerated girls in Rome on Thursday in a ceremony marking Holy Thursday earlier than Easter.
The Argentinian Jesuit visited the Rebibbia girls’s jail within the northeastern outskirts of the Italian capital, the place he carried out the identical ceremony in 2015.
Thursday, nevertheless, was the primary time the 87-year-old pontiff had devoted his annual ritual throughout Holy Week solely to girls.
Seated in a wheelchair, the pope washed the ft of every of the prisoners, a few of them in tears, earlier than drying them off with a towel and kissing them.
“All of us have small failures, massive failures,” mentioned the pope in an impromptu homily throughout a mass held within the courtyard of the jail that holds some 370 girls.
“However the Lord is at all times ready for us, with open arms, and he by no means tires of forgiving,” he added.
The washing of ft is “a gesture that pulls our consideration to the vocation of service,” mentioned Francis, who as a priest in Buenos Aires had already begun visiting prisoners.
A couple of minutes earlier, the pontiff was all smiles as he shook palms with the inmates.
Final month, the pope caught a flu that precipitated him to cancel some public conferences. Throughout his subsequent restoration, he has on a number of events requested others to learn his speeches.
Within the Christian custom, Holy Thursday commemorates the day when Christ washed the ft of the apostles on the Final Supper.
It’s a spotlight of Holy Week, which commemorates Christ’s last days earlier than his resurrection on Easter.
Since turning into pope in 2013, the pinnacle of the Catholic Church has usually visited prisons and refugee centres, together with final 12 months on Holy Thursday when he visited a juvenile detention centre and washed the ft of 12 younger males.
On Good Friday, he is because of preside over the “Manner of the Cross” prayer service at Rome’s Coliseum, which he was unable to attend final 12 months as he recovered from a bronchial an infection.
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