Following the Catholic tradition of priests washing the feet of their followers, Meryl Kilgore, a life-long Catholic, expressed her frustration with the low-quality foot bath she received from the Pope.
Kilgore, who intentionally did not clean her feet prior to being visited by the Pope, had accumulated a week’s worth of sweat and grime all over her toes, and expected that they would be thoroughly cleaned during the ceremony.
“Fer a man in charge of the holy feckin’ Vatican you’d think he’d a done a half decent job a cleanin’ ma tootsies,” said Kilgore in a thick Irish accent.
Most of the other church-goers, including famous musician Andrew Hozier-Byrne, gratefully accepted the symbolic gesture of equality and brotherhood from the church’s highest priest.
Mrs. Kilgore’s daughter, Mary, spoke to Cardinal reporters (from the paper, not the Vatican) about her mother’s ungracious response to the Pontiff’s gesture.
“Part of me agrees with ol’ Mr. Pope on this one. I’ve seen ma’s feet before and it’d take a bleedin’ car wash to get ‘em all the way clean.
“However,” she continued, “if you’re gonna do something for someone you should do it well. The disciples wouldn’t have been so keen on Jesus if he half-assed it when he cleaned their feet.”
Religious historians have offered concrete support for Mary Kilgore’s position, citing that Jesus did, in fact, clean the disciples’ feet quite thoroughly on the eve of his last supper.
“As we know, the Last Supper was held in a very nice restaurant—probably an authentic Israeli place—and Jesus, being a conscientious guy, didn’t want his disciples’ dirty feet to mess up the carpet, so he took it upon himself to make sure they were all clean,” detailed Harvard historian Wanda Bendtner.
“As far as we can tell, that’s how the tradition began.”
Whether her qualms were out of respect for tradition or scorn for the ineffective cleaning of her bunion-laden feet, it was clear that Mrs. Kilgore was not happy with the way things were done during the ceremony.
The Pope has not been available for comment on the matter, despite repeated attempts to reach him through emails, phone calls, letters and heartfelt prayers.
