This Holy Thursday was Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, Arciprest of the Basilica of San Pedro, in charge of presiding over the Lord’s Mass in the Vatican, while Pope Francis continues to recover.
Hours before, the Holy Father met with 70 prisoners in the Regina Coeli jail in Rome, who reminded them that “I like to do what Jesus did on Holy Thursday, the sink of the feet, in jail.”
Receive the main news of ACI Press by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social networks. Subscribe to our free channels today:
“This year I can’t do it, but I can and I want to be close to you. I pray for you and your families,” he said.
When celebrating Mass in the Basilica of San Pedro, Cardinal Gambetti recalled that the first Jewish Easter “develops in Egypt in a context of slavery, oppression, suffering.”
“Also the Easter that Jesus celebrates, true and definitive, develops in a context of proof, injustice, harassment, slander, disease, violence, fear, loneliness. Jesus ardently wishes to feed the intimacy, the familiarity of the domestic home, the friendship of the Cenacle, the fraternity of the ecclesial assembly,” he said.
The purple manifested himself deeply moved by “Jesus’ determination in wanting to share bread and wine with all those that the Father has given him. He is so human in the proof.”
“And I think of how many opportunities I have lost to be so human in the face of the adversities of life, busy looking for solutions or escape routes. Even at the present time we are passing a hard test and also among us is that Judas that took what was in the box and that will sell to the teacher to take economic benefit and in terms of power.”
“The world is removing what we have in our box, values, intelligence, consciousness, human love,” he said.
“We are all for sale based on a cost-benefit relationship in exchange for some economic and power benefit. There is no care of relationships, whether family, friendship, professionals or institutional. And there is no compassion for marginalized, migrants, the environment,” he added.
The arciprest of the Basilica of San Pedro said that “the world betrays us, that is, it gives us, it sells us to get something from us, as Judas does with Jesus. And as we do when we, when in religion or through religion, we look for some form of glory, something material or some power, we sell our faith. Wars are nothing other than the result of decay, of the concretion of conflicts world”.
In that context, he said, “our families and our communities are very similar to the group of the disciples, especially in their fragility, in their low self -esteem, in their anger, but also in their thirst for freedom, of justice, of peace. We resemble this group of disciples and also today Jesus loves. He does not want to win, or be applauded, or become rich. The only thing that matters to him is love. to Judas ”.
“He washes my feet. He washes your feet. Lives the dynamism of proximity, reciprocity,” he said.
After underline that those who “have received the sacred orders, we are called to participate to the universal extent of love”, the purple recalled “the testimony of Don Giuseppe Berardelli, an old priest of Bergamo who during the covid, when the resources were scarce to heal, died after giving up his respirator so that he could be available for another person. town”.
Next, Cardinal Gambetti washed the feet of twelve laity, between men and women, who work in the Basilica of San Pedro.
At the end of the Eucharistic celebration, the purple led the Eucharist in procession until it took it to the Eucharistic Reserve in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament of the Vatican Basilica.
David Ramos
Graduate in Communication Sciences by the Private University of the North in Trujillo, Peru. With more than 12 years of experience in Catholic journalism working in ACI Press, I am based in Mexico since 2018. I have covered the trips of Pope Francis to Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Panama.