Pope visits women prisoners
in Santiago: Full text
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| Pope Francis listens to a welcome speech by one of the inmates at San Joaquin Prison in Santiago.- AFP |
Pope Francis has visited inmates at San Joaquin's Women's
Penitentiary Center in Santiago. It is the first time the Pope has visited a
female prison.
On the first full day of his visit to Chile, Pope
Francis spent time with inmates at San Joaquín women’s prisonin Santiago.
It is Chile’s largest female penitentiary and hosts some 650
inmates, most of whom have convictions for drug trafficking.
The majority of women in San Joaquín prison are mothers. The
children can live with them inside the jail until they are two years old and
after that they can come for weekly visits.
The Pope met with around five hundred prisoners, together
with the chaplains and a religious sister in charge of pastoral care for the
inmates.
Please find below the full text of his greetings to the
women:
Dear Sisters and Brothers:
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to visit you. For me it is
important to share this time with you and draw closer to our many brothers and
sisters presently deprived of their freedom. Thank you, Sister Nelly, for
your kind words and especially for testifying that life always triumphs
over death. Thank you, Janeth, for coming forward and sharing your
hurt with all of us, and for your courageous request for forgiveness. How
much we all have to learn from your act of courage and humility! I quote
your words: “We ask forgiveness from all those whom we have harmed by our
misdeeds”. I thank you for reminding us that without this attitude we
lose our humanity. We forget that we did wrong and that every day is an
invitation to start over.
I also think of the words of Jesus: “Let him who is without sin among you be
the first to throw a stone” (Jn 8:7). Jesus asks us to leave
behind the simplistic way of thinking that divides reality into good and bad,
and to enter into that other mindset that recognizes our weaknesses,
limitations and even sins, and thus helps us to keep moving forward.
As I came in, two mothers met me with their children and some flowers.
They were the ones who welcomed me, and their welcome can nicely be
expressed in three words: mother, children and flowers.
Mother.
Many of you are mothers and you know what it means to bring a new life into the
world. You were able to “take upon yourself” a new life and bring it to
birth. Motherhood is not, and never will be a problem. It is a
gift, and one of the most wonderful gifts you can ever have. Today you
face a very real challenge: you also have to care for that life. You are
asked to care for the future. To make it grow and to help it to develop.
Not just for yourselves, but for your children and for society as a
whole. As women, you have an incredible ability to adapt to new
circumstances and move forward. Today I appeal to that ability to bring
forth the future that is alive in each one of you. That ability enables
you to resist everything that might rob you of your identity and end up by
killing your hope.
Janeth was right: losing our freedom does not mean losing
our dreams and hopes. Losing our freedom is not the same thing as
losing our dignity. That is why we need to reject all those petty clichés
that tell us we can’t change, that it’s not worth trying, that nothing will
make a difference. No, dear sisters! Some things do make a
difference! All those efforts we make to build for a better future – even
if often it seems they just go down the drain – all of them will surely bear
fruit and be rewarded.
The second word is children. Children are our strength, our
future, our incentive. They are a living reminder that life has to be
lived for the future, not remain in the past. Today your freedom has been
taken away, but that is not the last word. Not at all! Keep looking
forward. Look ahead to the day when you will return to life in
society. For this reason, I applaud and encourage every effort to spread
and support projects like Espacio Mandela and the Fundación
Mujer levántate.
The name of that Foundation makes me think of the Gospel passage where people
laughed at Jesus because he said that the daughter of the synagogue leader
wasn’t dead, but only asleep. Jesus showed us how to meet that kind of
derision: he went straight to her room, took her by the hand and said:
“Little girl, get up!” (Mk 5:41). Projects like those I
mentioned are a living sign of Jesus, who enters into each of our homes, pays
no attention to ridicule and never gives up. He takes us by the hand and
tells us to “get up”. It is wonderful that so many Christians and people
of good will follow in the footsteps of Jesus and decide to come here to be a
sign of that outstretched hand us that lifts us up.
We all know that, sadly, a jail sentence is very often simply a punishment,
offering no opportunities for personal growth. This is not good. On
the contrary, those initiatives that offer job training and help to rebuild
relationships are signs of hope for the future. Let us help them to grow.
Public order must not be reduced to stronger security measures, but
should be concerned primarily with preventive measures, such as work,
education, and greater community involvement.
Lastly, flowers. I believe that life itself “flowers” and
shows us all its beauty when we work together, hand in hand, to make things
better, to open up new possibilities. With this in mind, I greet all the
pastoral workers, volunteers and professional personnel, especially the police
officers and their families. I pray for you. Your work is sensitive
and complex, and so I ask the authorities to try to provide you too with the
conditions needed to carry out your work with dignity. A dignity that
engenders dignity.
Mary is our Mother and we are her children, you are her daughters. We ask
her to intercede for you, for each of your children and your dear ones.
May she cover you with her mantle. And I ask you, please, not to forget
to pray for me.
The flowers you have given me, I will bring to the Blessed Virgin in the name
of all of you. Once again, many thanks!
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