Francis praises bereaved fathers
POPE Francis looked well yesterday as he began four intense days of events leading to Easter, and renewed his own ordination vow.
Francis, who recently curtailed his speaking engagements because of fatigue related to bouts of bronchitis and influenza, read a long homily during a Holy Thursday ‘Mass of the Chrism’ in St Peter’s Basilica.
He also greeted two bereaved fathers whose story was told in a 2020 novel by Irish author Colum McCann.
The 87year-old Pope noted that there were two people in the Vatican’s Paul VI audience hall – ‘two fathers’ – one a Palestinian, the other an Israeli. Bassam Aramin’s daughter Abir was killed in 2007 by an Israeli soldier as she left school; Rami Elhanan’s daughter Smadar was killed in 1997 in an attack in Jerusalem. The two men’s story of friendship was told in the novel ‘Apeirogon’ by Colum McCann, who met with Pope Francis during an audience with artists on June 23, 2023.
‘Let us think of the beautiful witness of these two people who have suffered the war in the Holy Land in the loss of their daughters,’ the pope said.
During the service, Francis urged priests to be compassionate, admit when they have ‘strayed from the path of holiness’ and avoid dishonesty and hypocrisy.
Yesterday afternoon Francis presided at a traditional footwashing ritual in the women’s section of a Rome prison.
Francis is the first pope to hold the foot-washing ceremony outside churches, usually in prisons, homes for the elderly or hospices.
Today, Francis is due to preside at a ‘Passion of the Lord’ service in St. Peter’s Basilica and then attend a traditional evening Way of the Cross procession around at Rome’s Colosseum.
He will preside at an Easter Vigil service tomorrow and then, on Easter Sunday, will read his twice-annual ‘Urbi et Orbi’ message and blessing from the central balcony of St. Peter’s to tens of thousands of people in the square below.
‘Suffered the war in the Holy Land’