By Cindy Wooden, OSV
The Pope was received by Claudia Clementi, director of the prison, and met with about 70 inmates in the building's rotunda, a space where several wings of the prison intersect. The inmates who accompanied the Pope are those who regularly participate in the prison's religious education program, the Vatican press office reported.
In 2018, the Pope celebrated the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper at Regina Coeli, less than a mile from the Vatican. However, due to his ongoing convalescence, after spending more than a month hospitalized, he was unable to celebrate the Mass or the foot washing.
Pope Francis told inmates, "Every year I like to do what Jesus did on Holy Thursday, washing feet, in a prison," the Vatican stated. "This year I cannot do it, but I can and I want to be close to you. I pray for you and your families."
The Pope personally greeted each of the people present in the rotunda, prayed the Our Father with them and gave them his blessing.
Photos of the Vatican visit also show him in the prison yard waving to inmates peering through the barred windows of their cells and waving from the rotunda to inmates pressed against an iron and glass door hoping to see him.
The Italian Ministry of Justice website indicated that, as of April 16, there were 1,098 men detained in the prison awaiting trial or sentencing. The facility is designed to hold fewer than 700 prisoners.
As he left the prison, sitting in the front passenger seat of a small car, he stopped to talk to reporters and told them, "Every time I walk through these doors, I ask myself, 'Why them and not me?"'
He has explained on several occasions that all men are sinners, himself included, but grace, providence, family upbringing and other factors play a determining role.
Pope Francis, elected in 2013, has continued a Holy Thursday practice he began as archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina: routinely celebrating the Mass of the Lord's Supper in a prison or detention center and washing the feet of inmates.
In his first year as pope, he abandoned the customary papal practice of washing the feet of 12 priests during the public celebration of Holy Thursday Mass, and went to a juvenile detention center to wash the feet of Catholic and non-Catholic teenagers. He returned to the same prison in 2023 to wash the feet of young men and women.
In 2014, he washed the feet of people with severe physical disabilities at a rehabilitation center, and in 2016, he celebrated the liturgy and ritual of foot washing at a center for migrants and refugees.
On Holy Thursday 2020, the confinement by COVID led the Pope to celebrate Mass at the Vatican with a small congregation and to omit the optional ritual of foot washing.
Pope Francis also celebrated Mass in prisons outside Rome, in the cities of Paliano, Velletri and Civitavecchia.
After the Pope's "private" visit to the Regina Coeli, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, archpriest of St. Peter's Basilica, celebrated the parish Mass of the Lord's Supper in the basilica.
