Pope Francis has changed
the rules for the Holy Thursday foot-washing rite so that it can
also include women, sources said Thursday.
Priests can now choose participants from among "all God's
people", the sources said.
For Roman Catholics, the ritual is associated with the Last
Supper, before which Jesus washed the feet of his 12 apostles.
The pope, who has performed the foot-washing rite on women
in Buenos Aires and in Rome, wrote to Cardinal Robert Sarah,
prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, in December to
request the changes.
Cardinal Sarah has now decreed the necessary amendments to
the missal.
In his letter to the prelate Francis expressed his
"intention of improving the way the rite is performed so that it
fully expresses the meaning of the gesture carried out by Jesus
during the Last Supper, his giving of himself until the very end
for the salvation of the world, his boundless charity".
He also asked for participants in the ritual to receive an
adequate explanation of its meaning.
In his reforming decree, Cardinal Sarah states that priests
can now choose "a small group of faithful representing the
variety and unity of every part of God's people", without
specifying that there must be 12 participants as before.
"In this way the desire is to express the fundamental
significance of the gesture as being God's love for everyone and
'until the end'," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi
explained.
"It has been decided that this must prevail over historical
adherence to the memory of the 12 apostles."
"The pope considers the rite to be very important, as shown
by the attention he gives to it each year by celebrating the 'in
Coena Domini' Mass in places of hardship and suffering," Father
Lombardi concluded.
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