“We will do the same as Jesus”

ROME (EFE).— Francis explained that this Holy Thursday, Jesus made his disciples understand, by washing the feet at The Last Supper before his arrest, that “he had come to serve and not to be served.”

“Jesus forgives everything, Jesus always forgives, he only waits for us to ask for forgiveness,” he said to the inmates of the Rebibbia women’s prison in Rome, where he celebrated the “Coena domini” mass yesterday.

The Argentine Pontiff recalled that once “a wise old woman from the village” told him that “Jesus never gets tired of forgiving, but it is we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”

“Now we will do the same thing that Jesus did, wash the feet, which is a gesture that draws attention to the vocation of service. Let us ask the Lord to make the vocation of service grow in all of us,” he explained, and then proceed to imitate Christ.

After finishing the mass, the director of the center, Nadia Fontana, thanked the Pope for his presence: “For each of them it is a ray of sunshine that warms the heart and rekindles the hope of being able to start once more, even if it has to be done from scratch.” , he assured.

Then, the inmates gave her products that they made themselves: a basket with vegetables, a rosary with rainbow-colored beads, and some stoles.

The Pope returned the gesture by giving the center a painting of the Virgin and Child.

In addition, he was able to meet the only child who lives in the center, named Jairo, whom he caressed and gave an Easter egg.

The Rebibbia women’s prison, on the Roman outskirts, is the largest of the four exclusively women’s prisons in Italy and currently houses 360 inmates and one child, of various nationalities and many arriving from marginalized contexts.

Francisco arrived at this institution around 4 p.m. local time in a wheelchair and was welcomed by dozens of women, inmates, social workers, nuns and police officers, who applauded him and kissed his hands as he passed.

In this way, the Pope, despite his recent health problems, continues with a tradition that began with his pontificate, in 2013, that of not celebrating Holy Thursday in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome but in the places of suffering of modern society.

In his 11 years of teaching he has celebrated the “In Coena Domini” mass generally in prisons, although he has also done so in reception centers for refugees, in juvenile correctional facilities or in residences, with the sick.

This morning the Argentine Pontiff opened the rites of the Easter Triduum of Holy Week in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican with the Chrism Mass, in which the institution of the sacrament of priestly orders is commemorated.

Francis has begun the Easter rites with total normality despite the concern caused by his refusal to read in public and this Good Friday he is expected to celebrate the passion of the Lord and go, as is tradition, to the Roman Colosseum for a Stations of the Cross that, For the first time, he will have meditations written by himself.