CNA: GREAT piece about the Archconfraternity at The Parish™ in Rome and the custom of washing the feet of pilgrims

Check out this GREAT piece at CNA.  HERE

From washing feet to a place to sleep: How Rome is welcoming jubilee pilgrims

This piece describes how the Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Trinity of the Pilgrims and Convalescents, founded by St. Philip Neri in the 16th century, has been revived, is thriving, and is returning to the classic practices of the group including feeding the poor, helping the shut-in, and during the Jubilee, washing the feet of pilgrims who come to Rome. This is at the parish cared for by the FSSP, for the Traditional Roman Rite.

Here is a sample of the article…

[…]

Shortly after St. Philip Neri’s charitable lay group, the Confraternity of the Most Holy Trinity of Pilgrims and Convalescents, was officially recognized, the Catholic Church celebrated the Jubilee Year of 1550.

Neri, called the “Third Apostle of Rome” for his evangelization of the Eternal City, saw the throngs of pilgrims arriving for the jubilee year and wanted to do something.

“In Rome at that time, pilgrims arrived on foot or on horseback, so … many of them were arriving in desolate conditions,” Fabrizio Azzola, a guardian of Neri’s archconfraternity, which today has both laymen and laywomen members, told CNA.

St. Philip Neri “thought of directing confreres to help pilgrims,” Azzola said. “On the one hand, [there was] the practical necessity of washing them, housing them, feeding them, and so on, but there was also the symbolic need: that is, to welcome the pilgrim and repeat the gesture of Jesus with the apostles.”

In the saint’s time, the confraternity (now archconfraternity) had many members and access to hundreds of buildings in Rome to host pilgrims, but today, at just a little over 100 members, the group is still trying to do all it can, including leaning on its pillars of prayer and feeding the poor.

“Today, we cannot do anymore all of the things the old confraternity did — it was very powerful and had buildings in all of Rome where it could welcome hundreds of thousands of pilgrims,” Azzola explained. “However, this symbolic act [of washing the feet of pilgrims] we can do, and so, bit by bit we are reintroducing the customs of the archconfraternity.”

Open to any individual jubilee pilgrim or pilgrims’ groups who request it, the foot washing follows the same Latin rite used by Neri in the 1500s. The short and simple ritual, which follows a brief explanation of its history and significance, includes a reading from the Gospel of John: the account of when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. At the end, everyone prays the Our Father together.

An aspect particularly significant to the archconfraternity members who volunteer to wash pilgrims’ feet is that they use the same white aprons used during St. Philip Neri’s time.

Azzola said hundreds of people, hailing from different parts of the world, have participated in the rite thus far, ….

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Go there and read the whole thing!   HERE