Pope Leo XIV restores Holy Thursday tradition of washing priests’ feet after 14-year break

ROME (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV has restored the tradition of washing the feet of 12 priests on Holy Thursday following a 14-year hiatus of the practice.

On April 1, the Vicariate of Rome published the names of the 12 priests whose feet will be washed by the Pope during the Holy Thursday liturgy in the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. They are 11 priests ordained by Leo himself last year, plus the rector of the Major Seminary of Rome, Father Renzo Chiesa.

“The full list includes Fr. Andrea Alessi, Fr. Gabriele Di Menno Di Bucchianico, Fr. Renzo Chiesa, Fr. Francesco Melone, Fr. Clody Merfalen, Fr. Federico Pelosio, Fr. Marco Petrolo, Fr. Pietro Hieu Nguyen Huai, Fr. Matteo Renzi, Fr. Giuseppe Terranova, Fr. Simone Troilo, and Fr. Enrico Maria Trusiani,” the Vicariate announced.

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On January 15, the Prefecture of the Papal Household already announced Pope Leo’s intention to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper at the Basilica of St. John Lateran. This tradition, too, had been interrupted by Pope Francis, who chose to celebrate the Holy Thursday Mass in alternative locations such as prisons and migrant reception centers. LifeSiteNews has previously reconstructed the full chronology of all the foot‑washing ceremonies performed by Francis.

Pope Leo has therefore chosen to restore not only the traditional setting of the Holy Thursday papal Mass, but also the practice of washing the feet of 12 men – specifically 12 priests – in keeping with the most ancient liturgical custom.

The Missa in Coena Domini commemorates the Last Supper of Christ with His apostles and includes the Mandatum, the ritual washing of feet, recalling the gesture of Our Lord described in the Gospel of John. The Catholic Church teaches, in accordance with Sacred Scripture and Tradition, that at the Last Supper the Lord instituted the sacrament of Holy Orders. For this reason, over the centuries a custom developed whereby bishops in their dioceses performed this gesture exclusively for the clergy of his diocese – subdeacons, deacons, and priests – rather than for laypeople.

This gesture is meant to symbolize Christ’s love for His Church – a love that the bishop is called to exercise toward the people through the ministry of priests, just as Christ loved and served the Church through the apostles, the first bishops.

Pius XII officially allowed for the first time the rite to be carried out publicly during Mass and directed toward 12 laymen, with the 1955-56 reform of Holy Week. The reform sparked controversy in those years, since it was unclear why the reformers chose to reverse the chronological order indicated in the Gospels. John 13:2 states that the Lord performed the washing of the feet after the Supper, not before, and this was also the practice in the traditional liturgy, at least until the reform of Pius XII, when the rite was celebrated at the end of Mass.

Already in the first year of his pontificate, however, on December 20, 2014, Pope Francis instructed Cardinal Robert Sarah, then prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, to revise the rite of the washing of the feet. His aim was to shift the focus from a gesture tied to the priestly mandate to one that emphasized service toward “those on the margins.”

Acting on this directive, the congregation – now a dicastery – later issued a decree updating the rubrics of the Mandatum, removing the requirement that participants be male and allowing the feet of women and, more broadly, of “members of the People of God” to be washed during the Mass of the Lord’s Supper.