In 2013, just weeks after his election, Pope Francis marked Holy Thursday by washing and kissing the feet of 12 people, a Roman Catholic ritual held every year. The surprise was who those people were: Two of them were women, and two were Muslims.
Those were both papal firsts. So was doing it at a juvenile prison, not the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, where popes in recent decades had carried out the rite of humility and service, meant to recall Christ washing his apostles’ feet on the night before his crucifixion.
It was one of several ways that Francis shook up papal tradition, along with his simple style of dress and his choice to live in a humble Vatican guest house. Francis visited other prisons on Holy Thursday during his papacy, but he also made trips to senior homes and refugee centers to wash and kiss the feet of their residents.
On Thursday, Francis’ successor, Pope Leo XIV, returned to tradition. For his first Holy Thursday rite as pope, Leo washed the feet of 12 Roman priests during an afternoon Mass at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of the bishop of Rome, which is one of the pope’s titles.
It appeared to be the latest message Leo has sent emphasizing respect for the institutional history of the papacy. They began with his first appearance on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica after his election, when he wore a traditional red mozzetta, or cape, and a gold embroidered stole over his white cassock.
Leo has also vacationed at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence that Francis chose not to use. Last month, he moved into the papal apartment at the Apostolic Palace, which had been empty since Pope Benedict XIV moved out in 2013.
These gestures have been seen as part of Leo’s efforts to ease polarization in the Catholic Church after Francis’ years of shaking up the status quo (not enough for some and too much for others).
The tradition of washing people’s feet on Holy Thursday dates to the early church and has “always been varied,” with some clergy choosing to wash the feet of poor men, said Gian Maria Vian, a historian of the church.
For centuries, only the feet of men were washed. But in 2016, Francis approved changes to the rules that allowed the rite to be performed for anyone “chosen from among the people of God,” including “people young and old, healthy and sick, clerics, consecrated men and women and laity.”
The Diocese of Rome this week named the priests whose feet Leo would wash, 11 of whom he ordained last year. The twelfth, the Rev. Renzo Chiesa, is the spiritual director of the Pontifical Roman Major Seminary, where priests are trained.
“It is clearly a gesture of encouragement to his clergy, to his priests, and Holy Thursday is precisely the day on which every bishop strengthens his communion with his clergy,” Mr. Vian said.
He said Leo clearly wanted to make the gesture at a moment when the priesthood is in crisis, with vocations down in most of the world except Africa. “Leo is trying to reassure these poor priests, who are fewer and more and more in difficulty,” he said.
The choice is also in line with Leo’s prayer intention, a monthly invitation to pray with him, for April. In a video, Leo singled out priests going through moments of crisis, “when loneliness weighs heavily, when doubt clouds their hearts and when exhaustion seems stronger than hope.”
Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
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