Two Gestures: Pope Francis on Holy Thursday
BY SAMANTHA VANITY | March 25, 2016
Pope Francis celebrated the Holy Thursday Mass of the Last Supper at a hospitality center for refugees on the outskirts of Rome in Castelnuovo di Porto. During his homily, the Pope reflected on the contrast of “two gestures,” Judas’s betrayal of Jesus and Jesus’s washing of his disciples feet. He offered an invitation of “brotherhood” and “peace” to people of all faiths saying, “we are brothers [and sisters] and we want to live in peace.” Citing the terrorist attack in Brussels earlier this week, he called out weapons manufacturers and arms dealers, saying they “want blood, not peace; they want the war, not fraternity.”
According to Vatican Radio the CARA Welcome and Hospitality Centre, operated by a non-profit organization provides temporary lodging and services to nearly 900 asylum seekers from 25 different countries. The mass was celebrated outside and included the traditional washing of the feet, an act carried out by Pope Francis for twelve individuals — 4 women and 8 men. The women included an Italian who works at the center and three Eritrean Coptic Christian migrants; and the men included four Catholics from Nigeria, three Muslims from Mali, Syria and Pakistan, and a Hindu from India [AlJazeera].
The text of Pope Francis’s full homily can be found below.
The bombs used in the Brussels attacks were built by the terrorists themselves. The attacks were caused, not by arms dealers and weapons manufacturers manipulating otherwise peace-loving Muslims, but by the same supremacist Muslim ideology that has killed over a billion people since Muhammad’s first battle, and 29,000 SINCE 9/11.