The Last Word
Perspectives from the president by Msgr. Peter I. Vaccari
“If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” (Jn 13:14-15)
O
n Monday, 20 October, His Beatitude Patriarch Raphaël Bedros XXI Minassian, along with several other Eastern Catholic patriarchs, eparchs and priests, offered an evening liturgy of thanksgiving at the Altar of the Chair of St. Peter in the apse of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
A large gathering of consecrated women and men, deacons, seminarians and lay faithful were present. They had traveled to Rome during the jubilee year to witness Pope Leo XIV canonize seven saints the day prior. Thousands of people had gathered in St. Peter’s Square and down the Via della Conciliazione for the canonizations. Included among the new saints was a martyred Armenian archbishop, Ignatius Maloyan, a victim of the Armenian genocide in 1915. I reference these powerful events I was privileged to attend because on one side of the historic wooden chair — encased within Bernini’s bronze monument, completed in 1666 and recently restored with funding from the Knights of Columbus — is a bas-relief depicting Jesus washing the feet of his apostles (cf. Jn 13:1-17).