Pope washes feet of young Muslim woman prisoner in unprecedented twist on Maundy Thursday
Pope washes feet of young Muslim woman prisoner in unprecedented twist on Maundy Thursday
Pope Francis continued his gleeful abandonment of tradition by washing the feet of a young Muslim women prisoner in an unprecedented twist on the Holy Thursday tradition.
6:39PM GMT 28 Mar 2013
While popes have for centuries washed the feet of the faithful on the day before Good Friday, never before had a pontiff washed the feet of a woman. That one of the female inmates at the prison in Rome was also a Serbian Muslim was also a break with tradition.
“There is no better way to show his service for the smallest, for the least fortunate,” said Gaetano Greco, a local chaplain.
Pope Francis kissing the feet of a young offender
Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 inmates aged 14 to 21, among them the two women, the second of whom was an Italian Catholic. Mr Greco said he hoped the ritual would be “a positive sign in their lives”.
Catholic traditionalists are likely to be riled by the inclusion of women in the ceremony because of the belief that all of Jesus’ disciples were male.
The pontiff, who has largely disregarded protocol since his election earlier this month, urged his fellow clerics before the ceremony to prioritise the poor.
“We need to go out to the outskirts where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters,” he said at a mass in St Peter’s Basilica.
“It is not in soul-searching or constant introspection that we encounter the Lord.”
Francis, the first leader of the Catholic Church from Latin America, led a mass with a mixed group of young offenders at the Casal del Marmo prison outside of Rome.
The 76-year-old, who was archbishop of Buenos Aires until chosen as pope, has already made a name for himself as a champion of the disadvantaged. In his homeland of Argentina he was known for his strong social advocacy, working in slums and shunning the lavish lifestyle adopted by some senior clerics. He lived in a small flat near the cathedral, flew to the Rome conclave in economy class, and chose to travel with his fellow cardinals by minibus rather than in the papal limousine.
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio - as Pope Francis was previously known - had already washed and kissed the feet of women in past ceremonies in Argentinian jails, hospitals and old people's homes, including pregnant mothers and AIDS patients.
Before performing the traditional feet washing, in his first general audience on Wednesday, Francis called on the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics to reach out to “lost sheep” over the coming days.
“Holy Week challenges us to step outside ourselves so as to attend to the needs of others: those who long for a sympathetic ear, those in need of comfort or help,” Francis told thousands of faithful gathered in St Peter’s Square.
On Good Friday, Francis will recite the Passion of Christ – the story of the last hours of Jesus’s life – in St Peter’s Basilica, before presiding over the Via Crucis ceremony by the Colosseum, where thousands of Christians are believed to have been martyred in Roman times.
While last year his predecessor, 85-year-old Pope Benedict, presided over celebrations from under a canopy next to the Colosseum, Francis is expected to take part in the procession and even carry the wooden cross on his shoulder for part of the way.
On Saturday, the pontiff will take part in an evening Easter vigil in St Peter’s Basilica, and on Easter Sunday the he will celebrate Easter mass in front of tens of thousands of pilgrims in St Peter’s Square and then pronounce the traditional “Urbi et Orbi” blessing to Rome and the world.
Also on Thursday, the Pope made his first appointment of a bishop, naming Mario Poli, 66, to succeed him as archbishop of Buenos Aires and the top churchman in Argentina.
Francis also put his first people on the path to sainthood, unveiling a list of 63 people including victims of the Spanish Civil War, Nazism and Communism. The largest number are considered martyrs of faith killed during the 1931-45 conflict in Spain.
Pope washes feet of young Muslim woman prisoner in unprecedented tw...
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Permalink Reply by Dawn Marie on
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Why do I get the feeling this Pope will not let us have one day of good news coming from Rome?
I hope I'm wrong. Prayers for Francis. Prayers for the Mystical body of Christ.
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Permalink Reply by Cathleen on
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Because since he has been elected it seems like it is just one little thing after another which he "tweaks" or "breaks tradition" with.
Many prayers for Pope Francis and for us all.
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"Francis set a bad example by washing the feet of two women"
Traditionalists are fuming at Francis' gesture during the Holy Thursday mass. He washed the feet of two women, one of whom was a Muslim
alessandro speciale
vatican city
Alarm bells rang straight after Pope Francis’ election when he presented himself to the world, from the Loggia of the Blessings, wearing a simple iron cross. No red mozzetta and no stole. Eyebrows were raised among traditionalist Catholics who defend the pre-conciliar Latin Mass.
The Argentinean Pope’s CV attracted instant criticism from fans of the Tridentine Mass. In an analytical piece published by traditionalist website Rorate Coeli, one Latin American journalist summed up his reaction to Bergoglio’s election as “The Horror”: “Of all the unthinkable candidates, Jorge Mario Bergoglio is perhaps the worst. Not because he openly professes doctrines against the faith and morals, but because, judging from his work as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, faith and moral seem to have been irrelevant to him.”
Above all, the new Pope was a “sworn enemy of the traditional mass,” the Latin Mass that is, and apparently forbid the implementation of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum – with which Benedict XVI liberalised the Tridentine Mass as an “extraordinary form” of the Roman Rite - in his archdiocese.
Another example, was the piece by Catholic commentator Michael Brendan Dougherty published in the National Post, in which he rashly – just three days after the result of the Conclave was announced - defined Bergoglio’s election as “one more in the pile of recent Catholic novelties and mediocrities.” This is because Pope Francis “falls in line with the larger era of the Church in the past 50 years, which has been defined by “ill-considered experimentation”: “a new synthetic vernacular liturgy…the dramatic gestures and “saint factory” of Pope John Paul II’s papacy, along with the surprise resignation of Benedict XVI.”
But hostilities exploded yesterday afternoon, after Pope Francis washed and kissed the feet of two girls – one of them Muslim – during the Holy Thursday Mass celebrated in the Casal del Marmo detention centre for young offenders, in Rome.
Pope Francis was accused of setting a bad example and violating Church law, to the extent that Rorate Coeli promptly declared the “reform of the reform” – that is, the return to the more traditional rites and celebrations after the drift, seen by some critics as a path of carelessness and unjustified innovation after the Second Vatican Council – which many expected Benedict XVI to carry through.
Ed Peters, an expert on Canon law and a blogger who is famous in the Vatican, naturally did not accuse the Pope of violating a divine directive, but by ignoring it, “what he does do, I fear, is set a questionable example at Supper time.”
In 1988 the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments published the Circular Letter Paschales Solemnitatis on the celebration of Easter rites. No. 51 of the circular letter states: "The washing of the feet” is a rite that is only performed on “chosen men”. The original Latin viri selecti is crystal clear on the fact that the chosen ones must be male.
A year earlier, the U.S. Episcopal Conference had decreed that although the practice of washing women’s feet was not mentioned in liturgical books, “the intention to emphasize service along with charity in the celebration of the rite is an understandable way of accentuating the evangelical command of the Lord "who came to serve and not to be served.”
The question came back into the limelight again in 2005 when the Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Sean O’Malley sparked a controversy because he wanted to open up the rite to women. On that occasion, the Congregation for Divine Worship had explained that whilst the “liturgical obligation” of washing men’s feet alone, remained, local bishops were free to decide otherwise, according to the pastoral needs of his diocese.
Then Pope Francis made his humble gesture. Speaking to Associated Press, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi explained that “in a "grand solemn celebration" of the rite, it would make sense to only involve men because during the Last Supper, Christ washed the feet of the 12 apostles, all of whom were male. But in the case of Casal del Marmo “the rite was for a small, unique community made up also of women. It was a specific situation in which excluding the girls would have been inopportune in light of the simple aim of communicating a message of love to all in a group that certainly didn't include refined experts in liturgical rules."
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Pope begins Easter with liturgical abuse
Quote: Cathcon- It is a salutary thing to visit the captives, as the Bible states, but the washing of the feet of the twelve who represent the Twelve Apostles is confined to adult Christian men. One of the two girls whose feet he washed was Muslim. Given the way the action will be viewed in the Middle East, it is hardly prudent.
Post scriptum!
We will see whether it is a particular case as Lombardi suggests or the beginning of a journey. Given his active support for the charismatic movement in his Diocese, one can only be concerned that he could be prepared to ordain women, under a movement of the spirit. For much of the last fifty years, we had the Spirit of Vatican II used to justify all sorts of unacceptable practices, which were never the working of the Holy Spirit.
How can the Pope maintain discipline in the Church if he himself does not conform himself to prevailing ecclesiastical legislation? He has the power to change legislation but it would be advisable to do that first.
SOURCE CATHCON
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Permalink Reply by Michael on
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Pope's foot-wash a final straw for traditionalists
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VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Francis has won over many hearts and minds with his simple style and focus on serving the world's poorest, but he has devastated traditionalist Catholics who adored his predecessor, Benedict XVI, for restoring much of the traditional pomp to the papacy.
Francis' decision to disregard church law and wash the feet of two girls - a Serbian Muslim and an Italian Catholic - during a Holy Thursday ritual has become something of the final straw, evidence that Francis has little or no interest in one of the key priorities of Benedict's papacy: reviving the pre-Vatican II traditions of the Catholic Church.
One of the most-read traditionalist blogs, "Rorate Caeli," reacted to the foot-washing ceremony by declaring the death of Benedict's eight-year project to correct what he considered the botched interpretations of the Second Vatican Council's modernizing reforms.
"The official end of the reform of the reform - by example," "Rorate Caeli" lamented in its report on Francis' Holy Thursday ritual.
A like-minded commentator in Francis' native Argentina, Marcelo Gonzalez at International Catholic Panorama, reacted to Francis' election with this phrase: "The Horror." Gonzalez's beef? While serving as the archbishop of Buenos Aires, the then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio's efforts to revive the old Latin Mass so dear to Benedict and traditionalists were "non-existent."
Virtually everything he has done since being elected pope, every gesture, every decision, has rankled traditionalists in one way or another.
The night he was chosen pope, March 13, Francis emerged from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica without the ermine-rimmed red velvet cape, or mozzetta, used by popes past for official duties, wearing instead the simple white cassock of the papacy. The cape has since come to symbolize his rejection of the trappings of the papacy and to some degree the pontificate of Benedict XVI, since the German pontiff relished in resurrecting many of the liturgical vestments of his predecessors.
Francis also received the cardinals' pledges of obedience after his election not from a chair on a pedestal as popes normally do but rather standing, on their same level. For traditionalists who fondly recall the days when popes were carried on a sedan chair, that may have stung. In the days since, he has called for "intensified" dialogue with Islam - a gesture that rubs traditionalists the wrong way because they view such a heavy focus on interfaith dialogue as a sign of religious relativism.
Francis may have rubbed salt into the wounds with his comments at the Good Friday procession at Rome's Colosseum, which re-enacts Jesus Christ's crucifixion, praising "the friendship of our Muslim brothers and sisters" during a prayer ceremony that recalled the suffering of Christians in the Middle East.
Francis also raised traditional eyebrows when he refused the golden pectoral cross offered to him right after his election by Monsignor Guido Marini, the Vatican's liturgy guru who under Benedict became the symbol of Benedict's effort to restore the Gregorian chant and heavy silk brocaded vestments of the pre-Vatican II liturgy to papal Masses.
Marini has gamely stayed by Francis' side as the new pope puts his own stamp on Vatican Masses with no-nonsense vestments and easy off-the-cuff homilies. But there is widespread expectation that Francis will soon name a new master of liturgical ceremonies more in line with his priorities of bringing the church and its message of love and service to ordinary people without the "high church" trappings of his predecessor.
There were certainly none of those trappings on display Thursday at the Casal del Marmo juvenile detention facility in Rome, where the 76-year-old Francis got down on his knees to wash and kiss the feet of 12 inmates, two of them women. The rite re-enacts Jesus' washing of the feet of his 12 apostles during the Last Supper before his crucifixion, a sign of his love and service to them.
The church's liturgical law holds that only men can participate in the rite, given that Jesus' apostles were all male. Priests and bishops have routinely petitioned for exemptions to include women, but the law is clear.
Francis, however, is the church's chief lawmaker, so in theory he can do whatever he wants.
"The pope does not need anybody's permission to make exceptions to how ecclesiastical law relates to him," noted conservative columnist Jimmy Akin in the National Catholic Register. But Akin echoed concerns raised by canon lawyer Edward Peters, an adviser to the Vatican's high court, that Francis was setting a "questionable example" by simply ignoring the church's own rules.
"People naturally imitate their leader. That's the whole point behind Jesus washing the disciples' feet. He was explicitly and intentionally setting an example for them," he said. "Pope Francis knows that he is setting an example."
The inclusion of women in the rite is problematic for some because it could be seen as an opening of sorts to women's ordination. The Catholic Church restricts the priesthood to men, arguing that Jesus and his 12 apostles were male.
Francis is clearly opposed to women's ordination. But by washing the feet of women, he jolted traditionalists who for years have been unbending in insisting that the ritual is for men only and proudly holding up as evidence documentation from the Vatican's liturgy office saying so.
"If someone is washing the feet of any females ... he is in violation of the Holy Thursday rubrics," Peters wrote in a 2006 article that he reposted earlier this month on his blog.
In the face of the pope doing that very thing, Peters and many conservative and traditionalist commentators have found themselves trying to put the best face on a situation they clearly don't like yet can't do much about lest they be openly voicing dissent with the pope.
By Thursday evening, Peters was saying that Francis had merely "disregarded" the law - not violated it.
The Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a traditionalist blogger who has never shied from picking fights with priests, bishops or cardinals when liturgical abuses are concerned, had to measure his comments when the purported abuser was the pope himself.
"Before liberals and traditionalists both have a spittle-flecked nutty, each for their own reasons, try to figure out what he is trying to do," Zuhlsdorf wrote in a conciliatory piece.
But, in characteristic form, he added: "What liberals forget in their present crowing is that even as Francis makes himself - and the church - more popular by projecting (a) compassionate image, he will simultaneously make it harder for them to criticize him when he reaffirms the doctrinal points they want him to overturn."
One of the key barometers of how traditionalists view Francis concerns his take on the pre-Vatican II Latin Massachusetts. The Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 meetings that brought the church into the modern world, allowed the celebration of the Mass in the vernacular rather than Latin. In the decades that followed, the so-called Tridentine Rite fell out of use almost entirely.
Traditionalist Catholics who were attached to the old rite blame many of the ills afflicting the Catholic Church today - a drop in priestly vocations, empty pews in Europe and beyond - on the liturgical abuses that they say have proliferated with the celebration of the new form of Massachusetts..
In a bid to reach out to them, Benedict in 2007 relaxed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Massachusetts... The move was aimed also at reconciling with a group of schismatic traditionalists, the Society of St. Pius X, who split from Rome precisely over the Vatican II reforms, in particular its call for Mass in the vernacular and outreach to other religions, especially Judaism and Islam.
Benedict took extraordinary measures to bring the society back under Rome's wing during his pontificate, but negotiations stalled.
The society has understandably reacted coolly to Francis' election, reminding the pope that his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, was told by Christ to go and "rebuild my church." For the society, that means rebuilding it in its own, pre-Vatican II vision.
The head of the society for South America, the Rev. Christian Bouchacourt, was less than generous in his assessment of Francis.
"He cultivates a militant humility, but can prove humiliating for the church," Bouchacourt said in a recent article, criticizing the "dilapidated" state of the clergy in Buenos Aires and the "disaster" of its seminary. "With him, we risk to see once again the Masses of Paul VI's pontificate, a far cry from Benedict XVI's efforts to restore to their honor the worthy liturgical ceremonies."
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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_VATICAN_POPE_TRADITIONALI...
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Permalink Reply by Jarlen Philumena on
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Me too, I hope I'm wrong
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Me too, I hope I'm wrong.
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Will the Pope Be A Prophetic Voice?
We have seen Pope Francis exemplify Christ’s extreme humility. Will he also imitate Christ and the Biblical prophets in challenging the powerful and rebuking the unjust?
It created an international sensation when the new Pope washed a Muslim woman’s feet during Maundy Thursday mass. Numerous Leftists and Islamic supremacists expressed their delight, including the dhimmi pseudo-academic Juan Cole, who is a Board member of a front group for the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Coming at a time when Muslim persecution of Christians is escalating worldwide, however, and when there already questions about the Catholic Church’s apparent determination to accommodate Islamic supremacism at all costs, and not speak up for the persecuted Christians, this foot-washing is being seen as an indication that the Church is surrendering and bowing down to its new Islamic overlords.
Cole’s article expressing his joy at the Pope’s action is an indication of that. Pamela Geller wrote trenchantly about just how disastrous was the signal the Pope was sending: “While millions of Christians are being oppressed, persecuted and slaughtered under Islamic law ...... this is stomach-churning dhimmitude. This isn’t merely a lack of leadership; this is betrayal on an unimaginable level. Kill my people and I will wash and kiss your feet. For jihadists, this image could very well replace the burning twin towers as iconic of Islamic imperialism and conquest.”
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