April 18, 2014 - “In the humbling act of washing his disciples' feet, Jesus made
Himself a servant - our servant. And he chose this path out of love saying, ‘You
too must love and serve one another in love.’ This is the legacy that Jesus has left
us.” Pope Francis made this exhortation during the evening Mass on Holy Thursday
at a rehabilitation facility on the outskirts of Rome, where he washed the feet of
four women and eight men who are living with disabilities.
Holy Thursday’s
Mass of the Lord’s Supper commemorates Jesus’ surprise gesture of washing the feet
of his disciples as an example of service to one another. Previous popes always held
the ceremony either in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican or Rome's Basilica of
Saint John Lateran and only included 12 Catholic men - usually priests – at the service.
But Pope Francis, continuing a tradition he started as Archbishop of Buenos Aires,
Argentine, last year held the first Holy Thursday’ Mass of the Lord’s Supper, barely
2 weeks after his election, among the inmates of a juvenile detention centre in Rome,
washing the feet of 12 of them.
This year, Pope chose to celebrate the Holy
Thursday evening liturgy at Our Lady of Providence rehabilitation centre run by the
Don Gnocchi Foundation. Ranging in ages from 16 to 86, nine of the 12 patients were
Italian, one was a Muslim businessman from Libya, one a woman from Ethiopia and a
young Catholic man from Cape Verde. During the liturgy held in the centre's chapel,
two sisters helped patients, all of them with limited mobility, remove their shoes
and socks. The pope then knelt on both knees on a small cushion before each person.
He poured water from a small silver pitcher over each person's foot; some feet were
greatly swollen due to the individual's medical condition. With a white towel, he
dried each foot and kissed it, often having to bend onto the floor to reach the feet
of those who were completely paralyzed. Two aides assisted the Pope in kneeling and
standing back up, which proved increasingly difficult as the 77-year-old pope made
his way across the chapel to all 12 patients. Yet, before rising, he gave each one
of them a long and loving gaze and broad smile.
The gesture of Jesus was
like a parting gift and "an inheritance" that he left out of love, the pope explained
during the Mass. "You, too, must love each other, be servants in love," he said in
a brief impromptu homily. He asked people to think of ways "how we can serve others
better - that's what Jesus wanted from us."
A large number of patients, their
relatives as well as the facility's religious and lay staff, directors and volunteers
attended the Pope’s Mass. Medical personnel and other staff members did the readings
while staff and patients, some seated in wheelchairs, provided the singing and music:
One person played acoustic guitar, another marked the beat with a triangle.
Msgr.
Angelo Bazzarri, president of the Father Gnocchi Foundation, told Vatican Radio April
17 that the pope's decision to wash the feet of patients with different abilities,
ages and religious convictions was meant to reflect the "universal gesture of a God
who became man, who serves all of humanity." By choosing to visit the rehabilitation
center, the pope was showing the kind of "evangelical mercy that he wants to embrace
the entire world of suffering," he said.
The evening Mass was the second of
two Holy Thursday liturgies over which the Pope presided. The first was a morning
chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, with the priests, bishops and cardinals of his
diocese of Rome. But others too attended the Mass.