Pope Leo XIV will not perform the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday in a prison, as Francis usually did, but will return to celebrating it in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, according to the calendar released by the Prefecture of the Papal Household.
The detail marks a change in style compared to Francis’s practice, who for years placed the rite of the Mandatum in settings of suffering—especially prisons or reception centers—as a pastoral and symbolic gesture at the heart of Holy Week.
Chrism Mass in St. Peter’s and Evening Mass in the Cathedral of Rome
According to the published program, Leo XIV will first preside over the Chrism Mass at 9:30 in the Basilica of St. Peter’s, where the oils intended for the sacraments are consecrated. In the afternoon, at 5:30 p.m., he will celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper in St. John Lateran, the Pope’s cathedral as Bishop of Rome, where the washing of the feet is expected to take place.
For the moment, it has not been announced to whom the Pontiff will wash the feet.
A Central Gesture of Holy Thursday
The washing of the feet, a memorial of Christ’s gesture at the Last Supper, is one of the rites most laden with meaning in the Paschal Triduum. In recent years, the transfer of the celebration to prisons and peripheries was read as a characteristic sign of Francis’s pontificate; the return to the Lateran places the rite back in the traditional liturgical framework of the Diocese of Rome.