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Rome, Italy, Apr 13, 2017 / 11:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis spent Holy Thursday washing the feet of inmates, telling them in a brief homily that God is someone who loves until the end. He urged them to imitate this love even while in prison.
“Having loved his people who were in the world, he loved them to the end. God loves like this, to the end,” the Pope said April 13. “He gives life to each one of us and he boasts of this because he has love, and to love until the end isn’t easy.”
“We are all sinners and we all have limits and defects,” he said. While we all know how to love, “we are not like God who loves without looking at the consequences.”
He encouraged the inmates to imitate the love Jesus showed in washing the feet of his disciples, saying they didn’t need to get up and take their shoes off, but “if you can act as a help, do a service, here in prison, do it. Because this is love, it’s like washing the feet.”
Pope Francis visited the maximum security facility of Paliano prison in the south of Rome. It houses former mafia collaborators.
The Paliano prison is famous for being the only institution in Italy reserved specifically for “collaborators of justice,” that is, criminals who choose to come clean and collaborate with the police in exchange for police protection and, at times, compensation from the State. As of April 1, there were 70 detainees in the prison.
