Pope, looking strong, washes feet of 12 women at Rome prison from his wheelchair

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis washed and kissed the feet of 12 women inmates at a Rome prison during a Holy Thursday ritual meant to emphasize his vocation of service and humility.

The 87-year-old Francis performed the ritual from his wheelchair, after recent ailments have compounded his mobility problems. The Rebibbia prison venue was outfitted to accommodate his needs: The women sat on stools on a raised-up platform, enabling the pope to move down the line with ease from his wheelchair without having to strain himself.

Many of the women wept as Francis washed their feet, gently pouring water over one bared foot and patting it dry with a small towel. He finished the gesture by kissing each foot, often looking up to the woman with a smile.

The Holy Thursday foot-washing ceremony is a hallmark of every Holy Week and recalls the foot-washing Jesus performed on his 12 apostles at their last supper together before he was crucified.

Francis revolutionized the ritual for the Vatican by insisting, from his very first Holy Thursday as pope in 2013, to include women and people of other faiths among the 12. Previously, popes performed the ritual on Catholic men only at a Rome basilica.

Francis has traveled each year to a prison, refugee center or youth detention facility to emphasize his belief that a priest’s vocation is to serve especially those most on the margins. In his brief homily, delivered off-the-cuff, Francis explained the meaning of the gesture.

“Jesus humiliates himself,” Francis said. “With this gesture, he makes us understand what he had said: ‘I am not here to be served, but to serve.’”

“He teaches us the path of service,” Francis said.

Francis appeared in good shape at the prison, even after presiding over a long Mass earlier in the day in St. Peter's Basilica. During the morning liturgy, he delivered a lengthy homily with a set of marching orders to Rome-based priests at the start of a busy few days leading to Easter.

Francis has been hobbled by a long bout of respiratory problems this winter and in recent weeks has asked an aide to read aloud his remarks to spare him the strain. On Palm Sunday, he skipped his homily altogether.

But Francis seemed energized by his visit to the Rebibbia prison, where he was given a basket of vegetables grown in the prison garden as well as two liturgical stoles embroidered by the inmates.

Francis, for his part, regifted a framed image of the Madonna that he had been given, saying as soon as he received it he thought of the women at Rebibbia. He also gave a big chocolate Easter egg to the young son of one of the inmates.

Even with Holy Thursday events wrapped up, Francis has a busy few days coming up that will test his stamina.

On Friday, he is due to travel at night to the Colosseum for the Way of the Cross procession re-enacting Christ’s crucifixion. On Saturday, he presides over an evening Easter Vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica followed a few hours later by Easter Sunday Mass in the piazza and his big noontime Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world) speech highlighting global conflicts and disasters afflicting humanity.

Pope Francis arrives at the Rebibbia prison to celebrate the Last Supper mass with inmates on Holy Thursday, in Rome, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Francis arrives at the Rebibbia prison to celebrate the Last Supper mass with inmates on Holy Thursday, in Rome, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Francis arrives at the Rebibbia prison to celebrate the Last Supper mass with inmates on Holy Thursday, in Rome, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Cardinals attend the Holy Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at The Vatican, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Francis celebrates the Holy Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at The Vatican, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

A Swiss guard gestures as Pope Francis celebrates the Holy Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at The Vatican, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Francis celebrates the Holy Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at The Vatican, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Cardinals attend the Holy Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at The Vatican, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Cardinals attend the Holy Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at The Vatican, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Francis celebrates the Holy Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at The Vatican, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Cardinals attend the Holy Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at The Vatican, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Cardinals attend the Holy Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at The Vatican, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Francis celebrates the Holy Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica at The Vatican, Thursday, March 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

No woman had ever preached the keynote sermon at the Joint National Baptist Convention, a gathering of four historically Black Baptist denominations representing millions of people.

That changed in January when the Rev. Gina Stewart took the convention stage in Memphis, Tennessee, — the Southern city home to Christ Missionary Baptist Church where she serves as senior pastor — and delivered a rousing message, asserting that Jesus not only included women in his ministry, but identified with their suffering.

But what happened next put a spotlight on the obstacles women in Christian ministry continue to face as they carve out leadership space within the patriarchal culture of the Black Church in America. Several women pastors told The Associated Press that it should serve as the breaking point.

“This is an example of no matter how high you rise as a woman, you’re going to meet patriarchy at the top of the hill,” said Martha Simmons, founder of Women of Color in Ministry, which helps women navigate the process of getting ordained. “The next Norton Anthology of African American preaching is probably 20 years away, but that sermon will be in there.”

Despite the enthusiastic reception for Stewart, the original recording of her historic sermon disappeared from the convention’s Facebook page, setting off a social media firestorm – driven mostly by women – protesting its removal. A recording of the sermon later appeared, but it was followed by accusations the convention edited her closing remarks, which challenges the four allied denominations to support women in ministry.

National Baptist Convention, USA, President Jerry Young did not reply to requests from The Associated Press for comment. He said at another January meeting that he believed the Facebook page had been hacked and he planned to involve the FBI.

“I still don’t know what happened with the sermon, but what is clear is that this was a form of erasure,” Stewart said. “I was just as shocked, stunned and surprised as everyone else.”

It is symptomatic of a larger problem, according to several Black women pastors interviewed by the AP. They emphasized how they were worn down by the physical and psychological toll of working in a male-dominated culture.

In some denominations, women have made progress. The African Methodist Episcopal Church estimates that one-fourth of its total staff are women, including 1,052 ordained ministers.

In the Black Church as a whole, male pastors predominate, though there’s no comprehensive gender breakdown. Simmons estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman, even as more Black women are attending seminary.

The conditions aren’t new, but the public discourse over women’s equality in ministry has rapidly gained ground due in large part to the bullhorn social media provides, said Courtney Pace, scholar-in-residence with Memphis-based Equity for Women in the Church. Pace noted how Facebook afforded Eboni Marshall Turman a venue to publicly share her grievances before filing a gender discrimination lawsuit in December against Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York.

The late theologian and civil rights activist Prathia Hall underscores this dynamic, said Pace, who wrote “Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall.” In the book, she details how Hall was a key inspiration for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

“The kind of thing that happened to Gina Stewart happened a lot to Prathia Hall,” Pace said. “When she was doing her work, we did not have social media, or cell phones with voice recorders and cameras in every hand. So who knows what the response to Prathia would have been with an empowered public like we have today.”

Hall was born in Philadelphia in 1940, the daughter of a Baptist preacher. As a youth, she took part in local speech competitions where she melded folk religion and liberation theology.

But not all of Hall’s relationships within the insular preaching fraternity of the National Baptist Convention were as collegial as her relationship with King, whom she said in later years did more with “I have a dream” than she could have.

Many theologically conservative Christian churches, including some Black Protestant denominations, prohibit women from preaching. They frequently cite certain biblical passages, including one they interpret as saying women ought to “be silent” in churches. Even in denominations without explicit bans, women with leadership aspirations often must contend with a patriarchal culture.

Last month, the audience was dotted with young Black women at an event hosted at the Howard Divinity School in Washington. A group convened a panel about the evolution of Black women’s role in the church.

Inside the cavernous Dunbarton Chapel that Howard Divinity shares with the Howard School of Law, a half-dozen Black women representing a range of independent churches and Black Protestant denominations spoke about persevering through instability and transition.

Their current duties, some of the women said, left them exhausted and unable to grieve the members they lost to COVID-19.

One speaker was the Rev. Lyvonne Briggs. In 2019, she was being overworked and underpaid as an assistant pastor of a large Baptist church in California. Her marriage dissolved.

She restarted her life in Atlanta. During the lockdown one Sunday morning in her apartment, Briggs went live on Instagram and held a self-styled worship space for 25 people to share their experiences. It became known as The Proverbial Experience, which Briggs describes as an “African-centered, womanist series of spiritual gatherings to nourish the soul.”

In two years, Briggs grew her church into a digital community of 3,000. She also wrote “Sensual Faith: The Spiritual Art of Coming Back to Your Body,” a treatise on liberation from the sexual politics and objectification of Black women’s bodies in the church setting.

“I don’t ascribe to this idea that the Black Church is dead,” Briggs told the AP. “But I do acknowledge and promote that we have to eulogize what it used to be so that we can birth something new.”

One preacher who fashions himself an expert on the topic of women’s role in the church, Walter Gardner of the Newark Church of Christ in Newark, N.J, sent a video link of one of his lectures when queried by the AP about his beliefs. At the end of one session, Gardner suggested that women, overall, ignore Scripture and are incapable of being taught.

That’s a mindset Gina Stewart would like to change, on behalf of future generations of Black women.

“I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart, who has continued to charge forward.

In a given week, her preaching schedule can take her to multiple cities. As an example, she traveled to Washington earlier this month after accepting a sought-after invitation to preach at Howard University’s Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel.

Stewart's goals mesh with those of Eboni Marshall Turman, who gave the Martin Luther King Jr. Crown Forum lecture in February at Martin Luther King’s alma mater, Morehouse College. In December, after not being named a finalist, she had sued Abyssinian Baptist Church and its pulpit search committee for gender discrimination over its hiring process for its next senior pastor, an assertion the church and the committee disputed. No woman has ever held the post.

A former Abyssinian assistant minister, the Rev. Rashad Raymond Moore, said in an email to The Associated Press that of the several dozen applicants for the senior pastor job, “none were more exciting, promising and refreshing than Eboni Marshall Turman.”

Added Moore, who now is pastor of New York City’s First Baptist Church of Crown Heights, “Pastoral searches in Black congregations, historically socially conservative, are often mired in the politics of discrimination, including biases based on gender, sexual orientation, marital status and age.”

Marshall Turman, a Yale Divinity School professor, offered pointed critiques in her first book at what she deemed the inherent patriarchy of Morehouse’s social gospel justice tradition. She adapted her recent lecture’s title from the last speech ever given by King, the all-male college’s most famous alumni.

The title was blunt: “I’m Not Fearing Any Man.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Rev. Gina Stewart looks on during church service at Rankin Chapel, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Washington. Throughout its long history, the Black Church in America has, for the most part, been a patriarchal institution. Now, more Black women are taking on high-profile leadership roles. But the founder of Women of Color in Ministry estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman. “I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)

Rev. Gina Stewart preaches during church service at Rankin Chapel, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Washington. Throughout its long history, the Black Church in America has, for the most part, been a patriarchal institution. Now, more Black women are taking on high-profile leadership roles. But the founder of Women of Color in Ministry estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman. “I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)

The Howard University gospel choir performs during church service at Rankin Chapel, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Washington. Throughout its long history, the Black Church in America has, for the most part, been a patriarchal institution. Now, more Black women are taking on high-profile leadership roles. But the founder of Women of Color in Ministry estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman. “I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)

Parishioners clap and raise their hands as Rev. Gina Stewart preaches during church service at Rankin Chapel, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Washington. Throughout its long history, the Black Church in America has, for the most part, been a patriarchal institution. Now, more Black women are taking on high-profile leadership roles. But the founder of Women of Color in Ministry estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman. “I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)

Rev. Gina Stewart, left, greets a parishioner after church service at Rankin Chapel, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Washington. Throughout its long history, the Black Church in America has, for the most part, been a patriarchal institution. Now, more Black women are taking on high-profile leadership roles. But the founder of Women of Color in Ministry estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman. “I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)

Rev. Gina Stewart, right, hugs a parishioner after church service at Rankin Chapel, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Washington. Throughout its long history, the Black Church in America has, for the most part, been a patriarchal institution. Now, more Black women are taking on high-profile leadership roles. But the founder of Women of Color in Ministry estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman. “I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)

Rev. Gina Stewart, third from right, holds hands with students and faculty of Howard University before church service at Rankin Chapel, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Washington. Throughout its long history, the Black Church in America has, for the most part, been a patriarchal institution. Now, more Black women are taking on high-profile leadership roles. But the founder of Women of Color in Ministry estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman. “I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)

Rev. Gina Stewart preaches during church service at Rankin Chapel, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Washington.Throughout its long history, the Black Church in America has, for the most part, been a patriarchal institution. Now, more Black women are taking on high-profile leadership roles. But the founder of Women of Color in Ministry estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman. “I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)

Alumni members of Delta Sigma Theta sorority watch Rev. Gina Stewart preach during church service at Rankin Chapel, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Washington. Throughout its long history, the Black Church in America has, for the most part, been a patriarchal institution. Now, more Black women are taking on high-profile leadership roles. But the founder of Women of Color in Ministry estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman. “I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)

Rev. Gina Stewart, right, preaches during church service at Rankin Chapel, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Washington. Throughout its long history, the Black Church in America has, for the most part, been a patriarchal institution. Now, more Black women are taking on high-profile leadership roles. But the founder of Women of Color in Ministry estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman. “I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)

Rev. Gina Stewart preaches during church service at Rankin Chapel, Sunday, April 7, 2024, in Washington. Throughout its long history, the Black Church in America has, for the most part, been a patriarchal institution. Now, more Black women are taking on high-profile leadership roles. But the founder of Women of Color in Ministry estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman. “I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart. (AP Photo/Terrance Williams)