The platform allowed the pope to wash and kiss their feet without getting all the way on the ground as he has done in past years.
The Mass of the Lord’s Supper, offered on the evening of Holy Thursday, marks Christ’s institution of the Eucharist and the Mass.
Pope Francis told the young prison inmates that Jesus is never shocked by what we are on the inside, because he already knows our weaknesses: “He is never scared, because he has already paid [our debt]. He just wants to accompany us, he wants to take us by the hand so that life is not so hard for us.”
We often see the many bad things in society, he said, and we think, “thank goodness I am not like that!”
“If I’m not like that it’s for the grace of God,” he said. “Each one of us could stray. Each one of us.”
During his time as pope — and as a bishop before that — Francis has made it a regular tradition to celebrate Holy Thursday Mass with the imprisoned.
His first Holy Thursday Mass as pope, just 15 days after his election, was also at Casal del Marmo prison on the northwest outskirts of Rome.
The juvenile detention center has approximately 50 young people ages 14-25, from different countries and with diverse ethnicities, backgrounds, and religions, according to Vatican News.
In the morning on Thursday, Pope Francis presided over a chrism Mass with more than 1,800 priests in St. Peter’s Basilica. He thanked priests for the “hidden good” they do, often in a ministry carried out “with great effort and little recognition.”
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Despite his illness and hospitalization last week, Francis was expected to preside over an intense schedule of Holy Week liturgies and services.
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency’s senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.
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