Pope to conduct mass in jail chapel

Published on 22/03/2013 00:00

POPE Francis will hold a major ceremony in the chapel of a youth prison instead of a Rome basilica, the Vatican said yesterday.

He will conduct mass on Holy Thursday at the Casal del Marmo jail for minors in the city’s outskirts.

During the service, the Pope will wash and kiss the feet of 12 people to commemorate Jesus’s gesture of humility towards his apostles the night before he was crucified.

All previous popes in living memory held the service either in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican or in the Basilica of St John Lateran, cathedral seat of the bishop of Rome.

When he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio often celebrated the Holy Thursday service in a jail, a hospital, a home for the elderly or with poor people.