1 in 100 Americans are in prison today, 7 times the number in 1970.

Lord, have mercy!

The United States has 25 % of the world’s entire prison population

Christ, have mercy!

40% of the people in prison in the United States are African-American.

Lord, have mercy!

20% of the people in prison in the United States are Hispanic.

Christ, have mercy!

Two-thirds of those incarcerated in the United States are for nonviolent crimes.

Lord, have mercy!

Christ of Self-Defense

There are 250 million guns in the Unites States today; one third of them are hand guns.

Lord, have mercy!

25% of adults and one-third of households in the U.S. have at least one gun.

Christ, have mercy!

There are 30,000 gun deaths annually in the United States.

Lord, have mercy!

Christ of Children

1 in 28 children in America have at least one parent in prison.

Lord, have mercy!

1 in 9 Black children have at least one parent in prison.

Christ, have mercy!

65% of the women in Pennsylvania State prisons are mothers of children under 18 years of age.

Lord, have mercy!

55% of the men in Pennsylvania State Prisons are father of children under 18 years of age.

Christ, have mercy!

The children and siblings of those in prison are six times more likely to wind up in prison themselves.

Lord, have mercy!

Christ of Young Black Men

45% of the 250 murders in Philadelphia in 2010 are still under investigation

Lord, have mercy!

77% of the victims in these unresolved cases are black males.

Christ, have mercy!

79% of these unresolved murder cases are of black males under the age of 30.

Lord, have mercy!

Christ of Poverty

Philadelphia is officially the poorest of the 10 largest cities in the US (25% below the poverty line).

Lord, have mercy!

25% to 30% of prisoners in Philadelphia read at a second or third grade level.

Christ, have mercy!

The First Congressional District in North Philadelphia is one of the hungriest, second only to the Bronx, N.Y. in the United States.

Lord, have mercy!

Jesus said to his Disciples: “Give them some food yourselves.” (Mt. 14:16)

Christ, have mercy!

These figures are a compilation of recent reports: the Pew Center Study, 2009, the House Resolution Bill #203 in the State of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Inquirer, November 2010, and The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, an ongoing national poll done in conjunction with the Food Research and Action Center in Washington.

–From Adeodatus Prison Ministry

Serving as a Catholic chaplain in the Philadelphia Prison with its 8000 plus inmates, I hear a lot of ‘confessions.’ It is humbling to hear these men and women tumble out their sins as I sit across from them at a metal table in the cellblock. Holding their hands, I pray with them. At the same time I am struck at how their stories need to be heard by others. The wrongdoings yes, but about the dysfunctional families they grew up in also. The lack of fathering/mothering. The poverty. The lostness and sense of unworthinesss. About how they are being found as well, in of all places–a prison! These are God’s daughters and sons too, and they are being found by the Good Shepherd. If them, why not us?

Click here to read the entire Voices From Prison newsletter.

Click here to download Voices From Prison – Issue #6

He trudges down the stairs from his cell a little rumpled, carrying a sheet of paper. “Something I wrote for you,” he quips as he sits near me on the metal seats at the table in the cellblock. His square face, dark buzz-cut hair, lips that make funny grimaces when he speaks, broad shoulders which I hit lightly sometimes as we converse, and endearing manner though he robbed his grandmother for drug money, make me love him like one of God’s lost sheep, even though when I walk away I think he may actually be hopeless.

We get increasingly communicative as we spend the half hour together in view of the female Correctional Officer and the other inmates who are milling around. At times he runs back to his cell to get pictures of his family (never shown to me in the past three years) and a book he offers me to read about a guy who carried a full-size crucifix around the world as his mission. Tom tells me he feels like giving up at times as he lays on his bunk with nothing to do. I draw him out about the depression he has spoken about before. Words like “empty” and “lonely” come up. I go for them, ask him about trying to write to his father who is a “mean old guy but I love him.” Tom says his dad is not the kind of guy whom you write your feelings to, this 50 year old truck driver who left his wife when Tom was seven years of age and the oldest of three, the mother a heroin addict and who died soon after. “No wonder you feel an emptiness,” I say, searching for his feelings. He doesn’t show any.

We get to talking about his fears of not making it when he gets out, maybe going to a half-way house. “Didn’t you do that the last time?” I ask. “Yeah,” he gives me a rueful look. I remind him of how he told me about his running wild in the drug scene, “how you would hustle while your girl friend waited.” I wanted him to remember that he had told me these things before. “Yeah, and then I made her get into a car while I waited.” “What do you mean?” I ask. “I know she belongs to me, even though she has sex with a john to get us drug money,” he explains, though his grimacing lips show me he realizes how crazy that is. “Oh man!” I hit him on the shoulder.”

This reminds me of something I read in Scripture this morning. I pick up his Recovery Bible he has with a few paper stubs marking key passages for him. “Hey, let me see if I can find something I read this morning. It reminds me of you.” I then tell him partly–with him picking up the thread–of the story of the birth of Ishmael. “A wild ass of a man,” I tell him. “What’s that mean?” he asks. I then find the passage and read it to him, while he looks over my shoulder:

You are with child, and shall bear a son; you shall call him Ishmael, because the Lord has heard of your humiliation. He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; he shall dwell apart, opposing all his kinsmen.

I repeat, “You are like that Tom, a wild ass of a man.” Not sure he gets this or likes it, but I explain a little, “You’re always running wild, running to fill up the emptiness…” He continues for me, “…and doing drugs to escape it.” “Yeah!” I punch him on the shoulder, then blurt out, “It’d kill me if you died from drugs, you know?” He looks at me quizzically. I think this was the point when he ran to get the pictures of his family.

He shows me the pictures, faded color copies on thin paper with curled edges, and I see his good- looking dad and Tom’s brothers and sisters and their little ones. He points them out and names them. I ask their ages. His father, he explains, raised a few other kids as well as his own three. “They’re the children of his second wife. He’s been going with her a while but they just got married a couple of years ago. She doesn’t like me.” Tom is holding up one picture of his younger brother with a little child at his cheek. “That’s good to see a man holding a kid so close,” I say, “like a father’s love should be for his child.” Tom gives me his wide-open look.

I remember another Scripture passage and try to paraphrase it, “God is describing himself as a father here, holding up Israel….no, he’s holding Ephraim, to his cheek.” I make a gesture with my hands against my cheek. With excitement now, and while making a joke about how I am not as good as the Baptists who can remember the precise citations for these passages, I grab Tom’s Bible again and search. “It’s from Hosea, I think.” I begin to page through the minor prophets. Miraculously, I find the passage in a few minutes. “Hosea, Chapter 11,” he says, pointing to it as I begin to read:

When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the farther they went from me, sacrificing to the Baals…(“false idols,” I explain to him.)…and burning incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; yet though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer…

I pause. I so want to make sure this young man from the streets, whose mother was a heroin addict and whose father and family won’t talk to him, gets the connection with him and God. I shift my face closer to his, look in his eyes. “So, even if you have done things you are ashamed of, or feel empty and hopeless, let God go down there to that place and love you, claim you Tom…he wants to, don’t you see?” He nods his head slightly. “Even if you are a wild ass of a man like Ishmael, God can’t bear to lose you…see?” I read further, particularly wanting him to hear the feelings of God shown in this Bible passage. “Look! It says God roars,” I tell him. Clenching my fists and widening my eyes, I show him what I imagine God’s passion is for him, for us. “It’s not just an angry roar, Tom; it’s a hurt roar, the roar of a man in love whose been left…he doesn’t want to be like humans and simply destroy what has hurt him, left him, thrown away his love. He will roar until we return to him. “I point back to the passage, “…like trembling sparrows and doves,”

Our time was getting short. He asks if we can pray before I leave. We join hands in our fashion, he gripping my fingers intensely with his head down. I ask if he wants to pray first. “Yeah,” he says. I joke and say he’s the only one who does. “All the others want me to do it first.” He prays for his family, then for me and the other guys in the jail, and finally for himself. Soon we end. As I leave he asks if I could bring him a copy book to write in. “I’ll try.” We shake hands. “I’m gonna get a cup of coffee now, Father Paul, and go back to my cell and read those passages.” “Good.”

Later that night I remember him and our time together. I had felt some hopelessness in his regard as I walked away earlier. Over three years now working as a prison chaplain. I recognize Tom’s addictive patterns and how drugs destroy even the best of intentions of these inmates. “It is a spiritual disease, a hole in the body, the heart, the soul,” explained one of them as he showed me the Big Book of AA recently. I pray anyway, “Please Lord, bless Tom. I love him as you do.” Making a gesture as of a father pulling his child up to his cheek, I say, “I beg you Father, don’t let my son be lost.” I’ll roar later…

-Fr. Paul Morrissey, OSA

St. Rita’s Parish Rectory (South Phila.) and the Bevilaqua Center (Kensington)

Please join us weekly on Wednesday evenings from 7:30-9 P.M. at St. Rita’s Parish Rectory 1166 South Broad Street (at Ellsworth) in South Philadelphia. Use the rectory door on the left of the Church. Welome!  (Call ahead 215-331-3640 to check for cancellation due to weather, etc.)

In November of 2011, (Thursday, November, 3rd), we will begin our monthly support group for families of inmates as well as ex-inmates themselves. This will be our next step in an attempt to foster healing in the broken relationships that result from crime. We will meet at the Bevilaqua Center, 2646 Kensington Avenue (Kensington and Lehigh Ave) from 7:30-9:00 P.M, and will meet monthly on the first Thursday of each month. All are welcome

Adeodatus is a spiritual program helping those recently released from prison adjust to and remain in society through prayer, support and understanding of Christ. Meeting once a week in communal fellowship, it is the belief of Adeodatus that every person is good and worthy of another chance in life, and that in helping them we help their families and ourselves.

Click here to read our Prison Ministry newsletter.

“Dance me to the children who are asking to be born.”   -Leonard Cohen

Kathleen’s Story

How to start? I have 4 sisters–3 older, 1 younger. My mother and father never got along that I can remember. My mother was mom to a point. My father was never there. All he did was drink. I can remember the day we—as in all my sisters and mom—were outside on the steps, just talking with our friends.  Even my mom, because she was the mom of town (smile).

Anyway, my dad was coming home from the bar. All of us were like, “Here he comes.” The next thing we know he was fighting with my mom because she was outside with all of us. He was calling her every name in the book that would not be a nice name.

Well, my life: I have been to jail the past 3 years in a row—2006, 2007, 2008. This year is the year I have been here because I asked God to help me save myself from the street. I am also having a baby again. All the years I been locked up I had a baby. But this baby is blessed.

My boyfriend did not want me to have this baby. Being pregnant in prison is no fun. I was going to kill my unborn child. I prayed to God for help with his child. I keep on praying, praying. Then when I talked to my children’s father, I told him that I had killed the baby. Before I told him this though, he said that if I did not do it he would not bring my son up to see me. It has been so hard for me to talk to my babies’ father every day, having him think I killed our child. Yet at the same time, I wanted to see my son. This went on for almost 2 and ? months. I keep on praying, asking God to help me.

In the middle of the summer I was on the phone with him, and I told him. The way I said it was, “I got to tell you something.” He was like, “What?” I started to cry because I knew he would hate me because of what I have done–lie to him. Then I told him that I never killed the baby. He was like, “I hate you!” and hung up the phone on me. I called right back but he did not answer the phone. This went on for three weeks after. I could only talk to my son because of my boyfriend’s mother (who was taking care of our child.) This was so hard for me, to lie to the person I love. But I knew if God did not want me to have this child then God would of never put it inside of me again. Being pregnant in prison is hard.

The baby Doc here is good, but could be better. Since I have told my kids’ father about me not killing our child, he came to see me. This was the first time since I had told him. He is still upset, but today we talked about it for some time. I don’t bring it up all the time, but without God’s help I know I would of never been able to tell him that he is going to have another child.

This was not easy to keep it from him, but God understands today that what I went through was good because right now I’m having a LITTLE BABY BOY. I am blessed to have God in my life, not because he wants to, but because Kathleen asked and prayed for God to save me and do what God needs for me to be a better child of God. This is my story. My advice to the women out in the street or in the prison: if you are having a child, pray to God to make the right decision before you do something that you really don’t want to do because of your boyfriend. Remember this: God also knows what he wants for his children before it ever happened to anyone. I hope I help someone out with my story. God bless each and every one. -Kathleen

A Brief Reflection

Kathleen is a 28 year old white Roman Catholic woman and a recovering drug addict. She has had eight children, including the one she is pregnant with. Six of her children have been adopted. “The kids’ father,” as she refers to her boyfriend, is raising one son who is three years old. Kathleen, as you can hear in her words, made a critical decision–not to abort the present child in her womb. In Philadelphia, when a female inmate is pregnant and about to give birth, she is brought to an outside hospital for the delivery. She is then allowed to stay with the child for 24 hours “to bond.” After this, the child goes to a foster family or approved family member or friend until her term in prison is finished. In Kathleen’s case, a friend of hers will keep this child until she gets out in about a year. At that time she plans to be reunited with her boyfriend and the other child.  Whether in prison or not, every year Kathleen’s situation is magnified thousands of times across the country and millions of times around the globe.

Co-Editors:

Father Paul Morrissey O.S.A. & George Munyan

Familiar foods were shared and the room filled with positive noise. At one table a black Muslim and his white wife stared at a small video. At another table a mother fed her crippled son. Nearby a young inmate rested his head on the breast of an older women and seemed to sleep like a contented baby. I wondered what the future held for all of them. Why did these women surrender a Saturday and make long journeys to visit them? What did these children think about this world when they returned to school on Monday and joined other kids? Where were inmates and families of the rich? Since so many inmates were addicted to drugs that was the reason most were here. Were these men criminals who were addicted or did their addiction cause them to become criminals? I wondered do we punish the sick for being sick? Would we imprison a person who stole drugs to relieve their cancer? Are these people in an endless descent into a final defeat?

When we love someone who is terminally sick we often are just reduced to being witnesses of their suffering, and in that sense we become the martyr. The word martyr means “to witness”. It is associated with suffering, and indeed, we do suffer when we helplessly watch the journey of the terminally ill. For these men I wondered if their drug addictions were terminal, and if their visitors, adult and child, were called to be their witnesses..their martyrs. Such was the world of drugs in America that Saturday at the prison.

-George Munyan

Please join us weekly on Wednesday evenings from 7:30-9 P.M. at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish at 17th and Morris Streets in South Philadelphia. (3 blocks west of Broad St. at Tasker-Morris stop). In school yard, go thru grey doors of shool building and turn left. First room on the left is where we meet. Welome! (Call ahead 215-331-3640 to check for cancellation due to weather, etc.)

Voices From prison
Father Paul Morrissey O.S.A. and George Munyan, co-editors
A newsletter from adeodatus prison ministry

Autumn 2008, Vol. 1, No. 2
In the past two years I have had the privilege of baptizing three young men in prison. What is astounding to me–a prison chaplain–is that each of these men brought another one to me for this sacrament. God is using prison inmates to spread his word; that’s how desperate he is. After his baptism, the first inmate, “Dominic” (21 years old), brought his cellmate “Billy” (28) to receive instructions and be baptized. A few months later, Billy brought “Sebastian” (25) whom I baptized this past September. In preparation for his baptism, I asked Sebastian to write down in his own words its meaning for him. His story below touched me deeply and is a sure sign that God is alive and active in prison.

-Fr. Paul Morrissey, O.S.A.

Amazing Grace: What Baptism Means To Me
When I was young, my parents spoke to me about Jesus Christ often…but never to help me build a relationship with him. These “talks” were usually brief and relayed to me as if Christianity was important…but I had no real help in understanding Christianity, building a relationship with Christ, or even the importance of what he has done for us. We never read the Bible as a family. Church only occurred once in awhile and I did not have the patience for it. Basically, the seed was planted but I never had help growing it into a tree.

By the age of 13, I gave up on any sound understanding of Christ and decided to go my own way. I began abusing drugs and alcohol, committing crimes, and severely disrespecting my mother. I was thrown out of every school they put me in and became so unruly that my own mother feared me. Due to this behavior, I found myself in juvenile group homes and residential facilities. I would behave perfectly until a place would ask my mother if she wanted me back. She would say “no,” and I would act out so severely the place would throw me out and send me somewhere worse. I caught criminal charges in some places. I remained incarcerated until I was 18.

It never helped me and I continued with the drugs, fights, and from time to time…suicidal tendencies. I was released to the streets on a path of destruction…always feeling as if something was missing and not knowing what. Feeling empty and alone. By this point, my father was saved and spoke to me about how he renewed his relationship with Christ, how to gain a relationship for myself, and the importance of having one. I wasn’t trying to hear any of it. I wish I had. Within a matter of months, I was back in jail. I began to pray to be saved and began reading the Bible. I didn’t necessarily embrace things as I should have though. When things got hard, I blamed it on God and Christianity.

Christ of Maryknoll icon by Robert Lentz who states, “This icon of Christ does not make clear which side of the fence Christ is on. Is He imprisoned or are we?”

My father bluntly told me that he feared for my soul. I also began reading things that “discredited” and rejected Christianity. I even went so far as to become a minister of an anti-Christian, White Supremacist, Church. (I have been a skinhead since the age of 13.) I got into a lot of fights with gangs and was in and out of jail. It was a dangerous time period, since we were outnumbered and made the gangs angry with our tendencies toward violence.

In December of 2007, my life began to change. I started to realize I was out of control and began to doubt that my life style or peers were beneficial. I began speaking to my parents about coming home to Pennsylvania. At this point I had progressed from alcohol to IV drugs. Needless to say, I soon found myself back in jail. Also, something new happened. I realized that being saved does not make everything miraculously perfect. I began praying constantly…at times with so much emotion that I cried.

On May 13th, I was lying in my bed and the song “Amazing Grace” came to me. My mother used to sing this song to me as a small child…and as I sang it to myself, meditating on the words, I began to cry. I poured my heart out to Jesus…my struggles, my sins, my guilt, my feelings…everything. Then, I begged to be saved. It hasn’t been long since I’ve been saved, but I know in my heart that I want to commit myself to Christ for life. I’ve truly been blessed to make it this far in life. To have a mother and father who love me and are there to support me. To be in jail, yet remain safe, fed, clothed…and even free in Christ our Savior. In him I have truly filled the void.

A brief reflection

Have you ever been saved like this? Do we have to go to prison to know our need for God and each other? Some of these men pray the rosary together in their cells. Others read the Bible together. It is not too late to start doing so with someone you love. It could be one of your young adult children or your spouse. It could be a boyfriend or girlfriend. It could be someone in your religious community or a friend. Sebastian had a father who told him, “I fear for your soul.” It is striking that this relationship with his father seemed to draw his son back to a real relationship with Jesus that filled his emptiness. We need people like this in our lives. Let us hear from you how your restlessness is opening you up for a real relationship—with God and others.How to get Involved

ADEODATUS PRISON MINISTRY
Spiritual Support Group
P.O. Box 40815, Phila., Pa 19107
St. Thomas Aquinas Parish School
1719 Morris St., Phila., Pa.   19145
Wednesday evenings, 7:30- 9 P.M.
www.spirhealth.com

Appeared in the Commentary section of the Philadelphia Inquirer, February 21, 2007

I began my first day as a chaplain in the Philadelphia Prison System on Ash Wednesday, 2006. My destination, the Detention Center, is one of six large prisons located on State Road near the Cottman Avenue Exit of Interstate 95.

An inmate led me into a cellblock where the protective custody inmates are held. They were dressed in bright orange jumpsuit-type outfits. Two inmates lived in each of these cells, with bunk beds on one side, the room hardly bigger than a walk-in closet. No privacy here, I thought. Constant noise too.

Some of the men glanced out of their cells, while others stood by the little barred openings. I imagined they might reach out and grab me by the neck as I walked by with my airport traveling bag, filled with materials with which to say Mass: missal, chalice, altar cloths, music, hosts, wine, alb and stole, and portable CD player.

I had been told by Laura Ford, my ministry director for the Archdiocese, and Phyllis Taylor, the lay chaplain for the facility, that the Mass is usually celebrated on the floor. “Yes, on the floor,” they repeated, “the inmates sit in a circle.” I tried to picture this arrangement as we drew up to a little open space between two sets of cells that faced each other.

The inmate who led me there placed a small bench near one side of the space, and drew up what looked like a trash can in the center. “Do you want to say the Mass on the floor or on this?” he asked as though it was the most normal thing in the world.

The trash barrel with its cover looked like an attractive alternative. “This’ll do,” I said, trying to fake casualness. I set up for the Mass with a tightness in my stomach, wondering what I had gotten myself into and if I would get out.

It turned out to be a profound experience.

Tough guys in their twenties and thirties with tattoos on their arms, whom I’d be afraid to pass on the street, squatted cross-legged on the floor around the trash can altar singing “Amazing Grace.” Even a man who had to watch from his locked cell joined in the singing.

All of them listened attentively as I tried to offer some words exploring the meaning of the ashes on our foreheads. “It is for solidarity with each other in our humility before God as we enter into the Lenten period,” I said. I didn’t know what they were thinking. What do you say to people in a prison to give them hope?

Each of them came forward then and devoutly received the ashes on their foreheads from Laura and me. During the kiss of peace which is offered as a symbol to reconcile before the Eucharist, I noticed that the inmates made sure to shake one another’s others hand as well as mine, including the two transsexuals (no one, even the toughest guys, seemed to disdain them). This ceremony was especially poignant when the guy who was only able to peek out of his cell reached through the bars to return a handshake of peace.

As I packed up to leave a short time later, I noticed one grizzled looking white guy leaning down to kiss the crucifix I had laid on the trash-can altar. (I mention his race because many of the inmates are Black and Hispanic, and also because some people think all of them are) He came up and asked me if I had a rosary. A rosary! His prayer was perhaps more fervent than many in our churches and synagogues because he knew he had sinned and needed mercy.

I felt sad for these men and women, these sons and daughters of God, even if they have done some bad things. Many of the 8,900 inmates in the Philadelphia Prison on State Road are awaiting trial. Some are serving out short sentences of two years or less, others waiting to be sent upstate. Worst of all, some are back for a second or third time. The hopelessness of their lives gets to my heart, like it gets to God’s suppose, as thousands of people roar by on Interstate 95 unaware.

The Gospel of Matthew (Ch. 25) tells us that we will be rewarded on Judgment Day for “visiting Christ in prison.” I think I know why I was called to this ministry now. To open my eyes to what God is doing in the world. To recognize him in his orange jumpsuit.