Pope urges opportunities for
prisoners to reform and reintegrate
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| Pope Francis addressed participants in the Vatican conference on the Catholic church's pastoral care of prisons (Vatican Media) |
Pope Francis on Friday met some 50 participants in an
international conference on the Catholic Church’s pastoral care of prisons.
By Robin Gomes
Pope Francis is urging for a change in the outlook and
approach in treating prisoners who, he said, must be offered equal
opportunities for reform, development and reintegration.
He made the remark to the participants in the international
conference on the theme, “Integral Human Development and Catholic Prison
Pastoral Care”. The November 7 - 8 meeting was organized by the Vatican
Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
Integral human development
The Pope said, “Many times society, through legalistic and
inhumane decisions, justified by an alleged search for good and security, seeks
in the isolation and detention of those who act against social norms, the
ultimate solution to the problems of community life.”
The Pope lamented that large amounts of public resources are
allocated to suppressing offenders instead of truly seeking the promotion of
the integral development of people, which reduces the circumstances that encourage
committing of illegal acts.
He said, “It is easier and comfortable to suppress than to
educate, to deny the injustice present in society and to create these spaces
for shutting off transgressors into oblivion than to offer equal opportunities
for development to all citizens.” He said this is an “educated way
of discarding persons”.
Reintegration
Pope Francis noted that places of detention often fail to
promote reintegration into society because they lack sufficient resources and
also because of frequent overcrowding which turns prisons into real places of
what he called, “depersonalisation”. On the contrary, real social
reintegration, he said, starts by guaranteeing opportunities for development,
education, decent work, access to healthcare, as well as generating public
spaces for civic participation.
The Pope urged today’s society to overcome the
stigmatization of someone who has made a mistake because, he said, “instead of
offering help and adequate resources to live a dignified life, we are accustomed
to discarding the person rather than making efforts for him or her to return to
the love of God in his or her life.”
Often, he said, a person leaving prison faces an alien world
that does not recognize him or her as trustworthy, denying him or her the
possibility of working for a dignified livelihood.
With these people prevented from regaining the full exercise
of their dignity, the Pope warned, they are once again exposed to the dangers
of the lack of development opportunities, in the midst of violence and
insecurity.
The Holy Father said that these prisoners, who have already
served their sentences for the evil committed, should not be subject to a new
social punishment with rejection and indifference. Such aversion, he warned,
exposes them to falling back on the same mistakes.
Window and horizon
Setting aside his prepared Spanish text, the Pope offered
the participants two images to take back home to their countries and
regions. Firstly, he said, one cannot speak about debt repayment by
prisoners without offering them a window and one cannot change his life without
seeing a horizon. He asked the participants to make sure their prisons
always have a window and a horizon. “Even a life sentence, which for me
is debatable, would have to have a horizon,” he stressed.
The second image is drawn from the Pope’s own experience at
the Devoto Prison of his native Buenos Aires, where he used to see a long line
of mothers of detainees being subjected to security checks, often humiliating.
For the sake of their children, these women were not ashamed to be seen
by everyone. The Pope urged that the Church learn about motherhood from these
women for these detained brothers and sisters.
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