Pope opens final Holy Week services but will skip Last Supper rite

Pope Francis holds up the book of Gospels during a Chrism Mass inside St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican (Andrew Medichini/Pool/AP)

Pope Francis has opened the solemn final days of Holy Week with a morning Mass in St Peter’s Basilica but planned to skip the traditional Thursday afternoon service that commemorates Jesus’s Last Supper with his apostles.

The Vatican did not explain why the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, would preside instead over the Vatican’s main Holy Thursday afternoon service.