Pope Francis will celebrate Holy Thursday Mass at youth prison

Another big surprise from Pope Francis this morning: he’ll celebrate the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper at a Rome prison for minors, and presumably will wash the feet of 12 young inmates during the liturgy.

Traditionally, popes have celebrated this Mass, which commemorates the Last Supper, at the Basilica of St. John Lateran or St. Peter’s Basilica. As a cardinal in Buenos Aires, Pope Francis would typically celebrate the liturgy in prisons, hospitals or homes for the poor.

The pope will go to the “Castel del Marmo” Penal Institute for Minors on the outskirts of Rome for the evening Mass, where young men and women under the age of 21 are serving time.

The institute trains young inmates for employment in such areas as carpentry, tailoring and cooking, as well as a variety of artistic and technical sectors.

A traveling pope?

Like his recent predecessors, Pope Francis will be a traveling pope.

It remains to be seen what style he’ll adopt in these journeys. The joke going around the Vatican press office is that the pope – and reporters – may be flying easyJet from now on.

The Brazilian president said today the pope told her he would come to Rio de Janeiro for World Youth Day in July and then visit Aparecida, site of Brazil’s biggest Marian shrine. The Vatican did not immediately confirm her report.

If the pope does travel to Brazil, no one would be surprised if he adds a stop or two in his native Argentina.

But given Pope Francis’ expressed wish to help create “a church that is poor,” some are wondering whether the costs of such visits may lead to changes in the way they’re carried out.

This is a pope, after all, who on the night of his election called home to Argentina to suggest that pilgrims there skip the trip to Rome for his inauguration, and make a gift to charity instead.

Papal trips involve significant expenses for travel, organization and construction of altar sites and other structures, as well as spending for security by the host country. To give just one example, hosting Pope Benedict at his two stops in the United States in 2008 was estimated to have cost at least $12 million.

One can imagine Francis looking at the plans and budget items for such trips, and thinking about how much money could be saved.

Whether he could actually find a cheaper way to travel is a good question. Typically, popes fly Alitalia charter planes, and about 50 reporters tag along in coach class.

Alitalia likes to put on a good show, and this can lead to incongruous moments. As I wrote in my book, on papal flights to Africa the airline always seemed to serve the caviar and Champagne just as we were overflying Chad, one of the poorest countries on earth.

I suppose a pope could fly commercial aircraft, and make sure the venues for papal events are kept as simple as possible. But there aren’t too many other cost-cutting measures one can imagine on such voyages.

What seems certain is that traveling is now part of the modern pope’s job description. Pope Benedict was a reluctant traveler, but he ended up making 25 trips outside Italy, nine of them outside of Europe.

Pope has a special interest in this event

Vatican officials expect Pope Francis’s trip to Brazil to ignite great enthusiasm among Latin American Catholics. For one thing, of course, this is the first Latin American pope, and the whole continent will give him a homecoming welcome.

Another reason is that World Youth Day is usually a showcase for Catholic energy, and there’s every expectation that young people are going to love this pope with the populist touch.

The pope has his own special interest in this event, according to the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff. After her private meeting this morning with Pope Francis, she told reporters that he wants to highlight in Brazil the church’s commitment to the poor, and the need to protect the most fragile sectors of society.

She said the two leaders discussed young people and their problems, including drug problems like crack cocaine. Use of crack has reached epidemic proportions in Brazil, with an estimated 1 million users today, experts say.

“For him it’s very clear that the youth are crucial for building the future of humanity. He hopes there will be a massive participation at World Youth Day. He’s very enthusiastic about it,” Rousseff said.

All this may make the World Youth Day trip a unique opportunity – and worth the cost – in the eyes of the new pope. Yesterday after his inaugural Mass, almost every government delegation extended an invitation to the pope to visit. We’ll see if other dates and places are added to his 2013 calendar.

Istanbul and Jerusalem

During his encounter with Pope Francis today, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople invited the pontiff to visit Istanbul on the feast of St. Andrew (Nov. 30), either in 2013 or 2014. The two leaders also discussed the possibility of a joint visit to Jerusalem next year, to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic meeting there between Pope Paul VI and Athenagoras I, the ecumenical patriarch of the time.

Highlights of pope’s talk on ecumenical, interreligious dialogue

This morning Pope Francis addressed representatives of other Christian churches and other religions who came to Rome for his inaugural Mass. It was a pretty standard speech, with some interesting points of emphasis that reflect the new pope’s agenda.

Here are a few highlights:

— He addressed the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I of Constantinople, as “my brother Andrew.” The reference was to St. Andrew, the patron saint of the Orthodox patriarchate, just as St. Peter is the patron saint of the Catholic Church.

— He said the best service Christians can give to ecumenism is to witness their faith “freely, joyfully and courageously.” This is especially needed in a world marked by divisions and rivalries, he added.

— The pope, who as a cardinal in Argentina had excellent relations with Jewish leaders, underlined the “special spiritual bond” between Christians and Jews and pledged to continue dialogue.

— Greeting Muslims, he said the followers of Islam “worship the one, living and merciful God, and invoke him in prayer.”

— The pope outlined particularly fruitful terrain for ecumenical and interreligious dialogue: in protecting the environment, in working for social justice and, above all, in cultivating a thirst for the absolute in a world where the human person is often “reduced to what he or she produces and what he or she consumes.”

— The pope’s only mention of violence came when he spoke about the “efforts in recent history to eliminate God and the divine from the human horizon,” an apparent reference to atheistic communist regimes.

— He extended a final thought for all those men and women who do not belong to any religion, but who “feel nevertheless that they are seeking truth, beauty and goodness.” He said they are “our precious allies in the commitment to defend human dignity, build peaceful coexistence among peoples and safeguard creation.”