POPE FRANCIS TO WASH FEET OF INMATES AT A PRISON OUTSIDE ROME KNOWN FOR HOLDING EX-MAFIA WHO TURNED STATE’S WITNESS

Pope Francis washed the feet of inmates at a prison in central Italy during a Holy Thursday liturgy, an annual ritual which he has used as a symbol of papal humility and his mission to the marginalised. On 13 April, Francis  travelled  to a detention centre in Paliano, 40 miles south of Rome, where he  celebrated the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, a liturgy where the priest emulates the moment Jesus washed the feet of His disciples. The prison in Paliano, in the province of Frosinone, is housed in a fortress style building in what is understood to have also been used by some of Francis predecessors as a prison during the 19th century papal states. This is not the first time the Pope has celebrated the Last Supper Mass in a prison. Soon after his election, Francis travelled to Rome’s Casal del Marmo youth detention centre where he made history by washing the feet of both women and Muslim inmates, a moment that set the tone for a papacy that would be focussed on the “peripheries.”