Pope makes emotional visit to Rome prison,
urges dignity for detainees, justice with mercy
by NICOLE WINFIELD
ROME, Dec. 18 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI made an emotional visit Sunday to Rome's main prison, meeting with detainees, denouncing prison overcrowding and calling for greater dignity for inmates everywhere.
Benedict spent over an hour at Rome's Rebibbia prison, fielding questions from a half-dozen inmates who spoke of their despair at being kept in overcrowded cells, away from their families, some of them sick with AIDS, and of having repented for their crimes.
The 84-year-old Pope told the 300 men and women gathered in the prison chapel that he loved them and prayed for them. He reminded them that Christ was imprisoned before being sentenced to "the most savage punishment" of all — death.
"Inmates are human beings who, despite their crimes, deserve to be treated with respect and dignity," he told them. "They need our concern."
Benedict decried Italy's overcrowded prisons and urged the government to overhaul the system so that prisoners aren't subjected to a "double punishment" by serving time in insufferable conditions.
And he noted that justice doesn't have to just be about righting a wrong, but also showing mercy. For God, he said, "justice and charity coincide; there's no just action that isn't also an act of mercy and forgiveness, and at the same time there's no merciful action that isn't perfectly just."
The prisoners seemed truly grateful for the visit, with more than one wiping tears from his eyes as Benedict responded to their pleas. And Benedict himself seemed touched by their heartfelt welcome: One inmate gave him a picture he had made of a white dove perched on prison bars; another showed him a photo of his newborn baby girl; another read a prayer he had written about feeling forgotten by God.
Benedict said he hoped his visit to Rebibbia, which houses some 1,700 inmates, would not only give encouragement to the prisoners as Christmas nears, but would draw attention to their plight.
On hand for the visit was Italy's justice minister Paola Severino, who acknowledged the Pope was visiting a "place of profound suffering."
There are an estimated 68,000 inmates in Italian prisoners, 22,500 more than capacity. Just last week, the Cabinet approved measures to ease the overcrowding by making it easier for people to be placed under house arrest, and by requiring judges to confirm arrests within 48 hours.
"For too long we have had data that shows an incredibly difficult and uncomfortable situation" that shows "the terrible condition of people who keep their experiences, sufferings and hope in their heart," Severino said.
So, Ms. Winfield, did you find the Pope 'tired and weak' and 'not able to focus on what others are saying to him' as you claimed in your axe job yesterday? Obviously not, or you would have seized on the littlest pretext to cite signs of what you seem to see as a Pope on the verge of a sudden loss of his faculties that would constrain him to resign if he followed his own criteria!... By the way, what one British tabloid did with Winfield's story, paraphrasing it slightly to make it appear it was the reporter's own original story, was just as blatantly dishonest!
And oh yes, did the 'tired and weak' Pope falter. lag, or give less than his best when it came time to answer questions from the prisoners? Surely, this is the most unusual group that any Pope ever had to dialog with... Thanks to the Italian service of Vatican Radio for promptly posting the transcript - 'non-official', to be sure, but does anyone really think the 'official' translation will be substantially different in any way?
THE POPE'S Q&A
WITH THE MEN OF REBIBBIA
My name is Rocco. First of all, I wish to express to you our and my own personal thanks for this visit which is most welcome, and assumes, at a time that is so 'dramatic' for Italian jails, a great message of solidarity, humanity and comfort. I wish to ask Your Holiness iF your gesture will be understood in its simplicity, even by our politicians and governing authorities, so that the dignity and the hope that ought to be recognized in every living person may also be restored to the very least of men, including those who are jailed. This hope and dignity are indispensable in order to resume our journey to a life that is worthy to be lived.
Thank you for your words. I feel your affection for the Holy Father, and I am moved by this friendship that I feel from all of you. I would like to say that I often think of you and always pray for you because I know your condition is very difficult - one in which, instead of renewing your friendship with God and with mankind, worsens the situation, including the interior one. I came here above all to to show you my personal and intimate nearness in communion with Christ who loves you, as I have said.
But certainly this visit, which I want to be personal for you, is also a public gesture to remind our fellow citizens and our government that there are great problems and difficulties in Italian jails. Of course, the sense of jails is to help dispense justice, and justice implies human dignity as a first condition.
Therefore, jails should be built so that human dignity can grow, that it can be respected, and that you can renew in yourselves the sense of dignity in order to better respond to your intimate calling.
We heard the Minister of Justice, we heard how she feels for you, how she feels the reality you experience, and so we may believe that our government and the responsible authorities will do what is possible to improve your situation, to help you truly find a good realization of justice that can help you to return to society, with all the conviction of your human calling and all the respect that our human condition demands.
For my part, I would like to be able to always indicate how important it is that prisons respond to their objective by renewing human dignity and not to assail this dignity, in fact to improve conditions. Let us hope that the government will have the possibility and all the possibilities to respond to that calling. Thank you.
My name is Omar. Holy Father, I wish to ask you a million things that I have always thought of asking you, but today when I have tghe chance, I find it difficult to ask a question of you. I am very much moved by this event - your visit here to the prison is a very powerful fact for us Catholic detainees, and therefore rather than ask a question, I prefer to ask you to allow us to plug into you with our sufferings and that of our families, like an electric cable to our Lord. I love you.
And I love you too, and I am grateful for these words which touch me to the heart, I think that this visit shows that I wish to follow the words of the Lord which always move me, when he says - as I read in the homily earlier - as he will at the last judgment, "you visited me in jail and it was I who awaited you".
This identification of the Lord with those in prison obliges us deeply and I must ask myself: have I followed the Lord's command? This is one reason why I came, because I know that in you, the Lord awaits me, that you need this human recognition, and that you need the presence of the Lord who at the Last Judgment will ask us about this.
And so I hope that the true purpose of these short-term prisons can be realized, to help you find yourselves, to help you move forward, reconciled to yourselves, with others, with God, in order to re-enter society and help build progress for mankind.
The Lord will help you, and in my prayers, I am always with you. I know that for me, it is a particular obligation to pray for you, almost to draw you towards the Lord on high, because it is a reality that the Lord helps us through our prayer.
I therefore invite everyone to pray in order to create this strong cable, so to speak, to draw you to the Lord and which connects us among ourselves, because in going towards the Lord, we are all linked to each other.
Rest assured of the power of prayer and invite others to join us in prayer so we can all be like a group that is tightly roped together as we go towards the Lord.
My name is Alberto. Holiness, does it seem right to you that after having lost, one after the other, all the components of my family, now that I am a new man - and since a month ago, the father to a splendid baby named Gala - that I am not allowed to go home even if I have amply paid my debt to society?
First of all, congratulations! I am happy that you are a father, that you consider yourself a new man, and that you have a splendid daughter. This is a gift of God. Of course, I do not know the details of your case, but I hope, like you, that you may be able to return as soon as possible to your family.
You know that in Church doctrine, the family is fundamental. And it is important that a father should be able to hold his daughter in his arms. And so, I pray and hope that soon you may be able to actually hold your daughter in your arms. to be with your wife and daughter to build a beautiful family, and this way, to help work for the future of Italy.
Holiness, I am Federico, and I speak in behalf of the persons detained in G14 which is the prison's hospital ward. What can prisoners who are sick with AIDS or are sero-positive for the virus ask from the Pope? From our Pope, who is already weighed down by all the sufferings of the world. Shall they ask him to pray for them? That he pardon them? That he keeps them present in his heart? Yes, this is what we want to ask you, but above all, that you may bring our voice where it is not usually heard. We are absent from our families, but not absent from life. We fell and in our fall we did bad things to others, but we are learning to get up.
Too little is said about us, and often, it is so ferocious, almost as if they want to eliminate us from society. This makes us feel sub-human. You are the Pope of everyone, and we ask you to do what you can so that dignity cannot be stripped from us, along with our freedom. Because it is no longer taken for granted that reclusion means being 'excluded' for always. Your presence here today is for us the highest honor. Our best wishes for a Merry Christmas to everyone.
You have said some truly memorable words - "We have fallen but we are here to raise ourselves up again". This is important, the courage to rise up again, to go forward with the help of the Lord and the help of all our friends.
You also said that people often speak ferociously about you. That is unfortunately true. But I wish to point out that others also speak well about you and think of you. I think of my own small papal family. I am surrounded by four lay sisters and we often discuss this problem. They have friends in prison, who send us gifts, and we in turn send them gifts. So this situation is very much present - positively - in my family, as I think it is in others.
We have to endure the fact that some do speak fiercely, they do so against the Pope also, but still, we must proceed forward. I think it is important to encourage everyone to think well of you, that they may have a sense of your sufferings, to want to help you rise up. I will do my part to call on everyone to think this way, the right way, not disparagingly, but humanely, with the thought that everyone can fall, but God wills that everything comes from him, and we should cooperate in a spirit of brotherhood and recognition of our own weaknesses.
This way, it is possible to rise again and proceed with dignity, that this dignity is always respected, that it can grow, and one is able to find joy in life, which is given to us by the Lord with his idea about us. If we recognize God's idea for us, the God who is with us, then even the darkest passages will have a sense in making us know ourselves better as children of God, and thus be truly happy, even in difficult conditions, to be men created by God. The Lord will help you, and we will be close to you.
My name is Gianni from Division G8. Holiness, I was taught that the Lord sees and reads everything within me, and I wonder why absolution was delegated to priests. If I asked the Lord by myself, on my knees in a room, would he absolve me? Or would it be a different kind of absolution? What would be the difference?
Yes, you have brought up a great question for me. I would say two things. First, of course, if you fall down on your knees and with true love of God, ask him to pardon you, he will. It has always been the doctrine of the Church that if one - with true repentance and not just to avoid penalties and difficulties, but for love of the good, for love of God - seeks forgiveness, then he will receive God's pardon. That's the first part.
If I truly acknowledge that I have done bad, and love for the good has been reborn in me, the will to do good, the repentance that I have not responded to this love, and I ask forgivenes of God who is goodness himself, he he will grant it.
But there is a second element: Sin is not just a 'personal' thing, something individual between me and God. Sin always has a social dimension, one that is horizontal. Through my personal sin, even if no one knows about it, I have damaged my communion with the Church, I would have defiled it and defiled mankind. This social and horizontal dimension of sin demands that it is also absolved at the level of the human community - it requires a sacrament, which is a great gift in which I can, through confession, liberate myself and can receive forgiveness in the sense of a full readmission to the community of the living Church, the Body of Christ.
Thus, in this sense, the necessary absolution from a priest. The sacrament is not an imposition that limits the goodness of God. On the contrary, it is an expression of his goodness because it demonstrates concretely, in communion with the Church, that I have received forgiveness and I can start anew.
So I would say to keep in mind these two dimensions: the vartical one, with God, and the horizontal, with the community of the Church and of all men. The absolution of the priest - sacramental absolution - is necessary so I can truly resolve and be absolved of my link to evil, and reintegrate myself into the will of God, completely within his Church, which gives me a certainty, almost a corporal one - the sacramental certainty - that God forgives me, that he takes me back into the communion of his children,
I think we should learn to understand the sacrament of penance in this sense - that it makes it possible to find, almost corporally, the goodness of the Lord, the certainty of reconciliation.
Holiness, I am Nwaihim, department GII. Holy Father, last month, you made a pastoral visit to Africa, to the small country of Benin, one of the poorest in the world. You saw the faith and passion of its people towards Jesus Christ. You have seen people suffer for different reasons - racism, hunger, child labor... I ask you - they place their hope and faith in God, but they are dying of poverty and violence. Why does God not listen to them? Perhaps he listens only to the rich and powerful who do not have faith? Thank you, Holy Father.
First of all, I wish to say that I was very happy to be in your land: the welcome on the part of Africans was most warm indeed. And I felt this human sincerity which in Europe is rather obscured because we have so many other things in our heart which make it rather hard.
In Africa, there is an exuberant sincerity, so to speak. I felt their joy of life, and this was one of the most beautiful impressions I got: that notwithstanding poverty and all the great suffering which I also saw - I met lepers and people sick with AIDS, for instance - there is a joy in living, the joy of being a human being, in our original awareness that God is good, that he loves me, and to be a man means to be loved by God.
So that was my impression - one might say the preponderant one, a powerful one - which is to see joy and merriment in a suffering nation, much more than in rich nations. This makes me think that in the rich nations, joy is often absent, that we are all so fully occupied with so many problems - how to do this, how to keep this, we need to buy more, etc. With all the great mass of things that we have, we are even more distant from our own selves and from the original experience that God exists and that he is close to me.
And so having many possessions and power does not always make us happy - that is not the greatest gift. It can even be a negative thing which hinders me from really living. The measures of God, his criteria, are different from ours. God gives joy even to the poor, he makes his presence felt to them, he makes them feel that he is near them even in their suffering, in difficulties, and of course, he calls on all of us to do all we can in order to help others emerge from the darkness of disease, of poverty. It is our task, and in trying to do it, we can become happier.
So both sides should complement each other: We should help so that even Africa, its poor nations, can be able to overcome their problems, their poverty, and help them to live, while they can help us understand that material things are not the last word. And we must pray to God to show us, help us, in order that there may be justice, so all may live in the joy of being his children.
Finally, one detainee read a prayer:
Holiness, my name is Stefano, division G 11.
Prayer behind bars
Lord, give me the courage to call you Father.
You know that I do not always succeed in thinking about you as you deserve.
And you have not forgotten me even if I often live far from the light of your face.
Make your presence felt, despite everything, despite my sins, big and small, whether done in secret or in public.
Give me interior peace, that which only you can give.
Give me the strength to be true and sincere; strip off my face the masks that hide my awareness that I am worth something only because I am your child.
Forgive my sins and give me the chance to do good.
Ally my sleepless nights; give me the grace of conversion in the heart.
Remember, Lord, those who are not here and still wish me well, because thinking of them, I know that only love gives life, while hatred destroys, and rancour makes hell of our long interminable days.
Remember me, Lord. Amen.
What an absolutely extraordinary session! I am sorry I missed watching the telecast, and that I have not had the chance to watch the video yet.
Quite apart from being to do any Forum 'work' during the daytime today, it's also one of those days when I can't access the Daylife photogrid, so I've borrowed some of the images from Gloria's usual generous dose of Ratzipix - and for those who haven't yet seen the photos there of today's event, click here:
benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=82811...
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/12/2011 15:37]