There’s something macabre about hosting a photo-op inside of a prison. Waiting for the pope to arrive at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Philadelphia on Sunday, inside walls topped with barbed wire, cameramen milled about while televisions blared. Harsh lights were trained on the papal chair, handmade by prisoners, which sat empty at the front of an elementary-school-style gymnasium.
The early warning sign of a Francis sighting is always his entourage. Surrounded by hordes of men in black suits and cardinals in black cassocks, the pope’s white was striking. He changed the feel of the room, just barely, smiling with unmistakable delight at the row of female inmates seated at the front.
Over the course of his six-day visit to the United States, Francis alternately preached and spoke; this was definitely preaching. He drew from the parable of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, urging inmates to embrace the possibility of redemption. “Life means ‘getting our feet dirty’ from the dust-filled roads of life and history,” Francis said. “All of us need to be cleansed, to be washed—and me, in first place.”
[For more of this story, written by Emma Green, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...-its-prisons/407623/]
Comments (0)