New Europeans

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Deeply Emotional Super Diversity May25 2016, Amsterdam

Hans Aarsman on the Pope washing Refugees’ feet

Your feet

Pope Francis washes the feet of migrants, Castelnuevo di Porto refugee center, Rome, 24 March 2016, photo Epa / handout Ossevatore Romano

Their wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for the pope, most migrants from the refugee center didn’t show up. Twelve agreed to have their feet washed. Three Coptics from Eritrea, four Catholics from Nigeria, a Hindu from India, a Muslim from Mali, a Muslim from Syria and a Muslim from Pakistan. Plus one Catholic from Italy. What was that Italian doing there? It’s likely that he was there to make twelve, the number of apostles whose feet Jesus once washed.

There have to be pine trees around, that’s the only thing I can make out of the dark strokes around the feet of the migrants. Pine trees are abundant in Italy, the further south you go the more cypresses you encounter. Next to the woman with the elegant headscarf you can just see part of a cypress.

The needles have been blown here, they’re not from the feet of the migrants. Those were spotless before they took their seats. The pope is just pouring some water over them. The assistant behind him hands him the white cloth, the pope pads the feet dry and then presses his lips on top of the instep.

Always when someone’s touching my feet, whether it is a pedicure, or it’s me, it’s always slightly uncomfortable. I would never use the towel I use for my feet for my face. Someone kissing my feet? I wouldn’t know what to do. Fortunately I’m not alone. The woman who is undergoing the washing is as embarrassed as I would be. The man behind her is shedding a tear and the pope hasn’t even started on him yet.

A tear? Is this perhaps about more than embarrassment? The pope is the leader of the biggest religion in the world, we are lumping the Catholics together with all Christians for the sake of argument. If he tweets something the pope is retweeted ten thousand times on average. Obama, not an insignificant person either, reaches an average of a thousand retweets. That’s ten times less. With a golden bowl and a golden water jug this world leader kneels before you and proceeds to press his lips on the part of you that is closest to the ground: your feet, which have trudged countless kilometers to get where they are now. The life of a migrant is not without humiliation. But in this moment it is completely the other way around. That must be a very unreal feeling.