Pope Francis will Wash Feet of Prisoners and Celebrate Mass at the Juvenile Prison on Holy Thursday as Confirmed by the Vatican

On Holy Thursday, the Pope returns after ten years in the juvenile prison of Casal del Marmo.

Pope Francis will celebrate Mass in Coena Domini in a restricted form among the inmates of the institute on the outskirts of Rome, the same one where he had presided over the Holy Thursday Mass fifteen days after being elected. In the following years, the Pontiff has always chosen symbolic places of suffering among prisons, refugee centers, care facilities for the sick.

Pope Francis returns after ten years to where he had celebrated the first Mass in Coena Domini of his pontificate, who on April 6th will preside over the liturgy of Holy Thursday in the Casal del Marmo juvenile prison in Rome.

This was confirmed, a few hours after the Pope's release from the Gemelli Hospital, by the director of the Vatican Press Office, Matteo Bruni. The Mass will be in a restricted form, not open to the public. A live stream is planned.

As soon as he was released, after suffering from infectious bronchitis, the Pope resumed his Holy Week agenda and, through his spokesman, let it be known that he will preside over the Easter rites: the modalities of the Holy Week liturgies "remain unchanged", confirmed Bruni, explaining that the Pope will preside over celebrations with a cardinal at the altar, even on Easter day. 

In the institute on the outskirts of Rome, the Pope had washed the feet of ten male youth and two female youth of different nationalities and religions that day: "Washing the feet means that we must help one another", he had told them, explaining the gesture. “It is my duty as a priest and as a bishop to be at your service,” he added. “But it is a duty that comes from my heart: I love him. I love doing it because the Lord taught me so". Then he had expressed the invitation that in the following years he has always addressed to the new generations: "Do not let your hope be stolen".

 In 2016, he presided Mass at the CARA. (Reception Center for Asylum Seekers) in Castelnuovo di Porto, outside Rome, which at the time housed around 890 migrants of various nationalities. Pope Francis had washed the feet of twelve of them. A gesture which, in the light of the terrorist attacks which disfigured the face of Europe that year, he explained with the following words: "All of us, together, Muslims, Indians, Catholics, Copts, Evangelicals, brothers, children of the same God, who want live in peace, integrated”.

Source: Vatican News Italian