c. 2000 Religion News Service
VATICAN CITY _ Pope John Paul II called Friday (June 30) for a wholesale reduction in prison sentences throughout the world as a Holy Year gesture to encourage inmates “to regret the evil” they have done and seek redemption.
The 80-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff made the appeal in a message to mark the church’s Jubilee in Prisons, which he will observe on July 9 by celebrating Mass in Rome’s Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven) Prison.
John Paul also urged governments to review their prison systems, revise their penal laws, if necessary, to abolish “regulations contrary to the dignity and fundamental rights of the human person” and give “more consideration to penalties other than imprisonment.”
In the 11-page message, which the Vatican issued in seven languages, the pope recalled that since the days of the Old Testament, Jubilee years have offered an opportunity “to right injustices committed, to mitigate excesses and to recover what might otherwise be lost.”
“And if this is true of every aspect of life, since everything human is capable of improvement, it is especially true of the experience of prison, where life is particularly difficult,” he said.
“Looking to the future and continuing a tradition begun by my predecessors in Jubilee years, I turn with confidence to state authorities to ask for a gesture of clemency towards all those in prison,” the pope said.
“A reduction, even a modest one, of the term of punishment would be for prisoners a clear sign of sensitivity to their condition and would surely evoke a positive echo in their hearts and encourage them to regret the evil done and lead them to personal repentance.”
John Paul did not discuss capital punishment, which he has said repeatedly should rarely if ever be invoked. Instead the messages dealt with “the suffering attached to prison life” and urged steps to offer inmates a chance to find redemption.
While appealing for clemency, the pontiff said practical reforms are also needed to benefit inmates once Holy Year is over.
“It is not a question of an automatic or purely cosmetic application of acts of clemency,” he said. “This would not affect the essence of things: once the Jubilee is over the situation would return to the way it was. It is a question rather of fostering initiatives which will lay a solid basis for a genuine renewal of both attitudes and institutions.”
The pope called on authorities to provide work, training and psychological assistance to inmates in order to avert “the degrading effects of idleness,” make it easier for them to re-enter the work force on release and resolve personality problems.
“Prison should not be a corrupting experience, a place of idleness and even vice, but instead a place of redemption,” he said. “Not to promote the interests of prisoners would be to make imprisonment a mere act of vengeance on the part of society, provoking only hatred in the prisoners themselves.”
John Paul deplored “the wretched state of some of the places of detention where prisoners are forced to live and the harassment to which they are sometimes subjected because of ethnic, social, economic, sexual, political and religious discrimination.”
The pope urged reform of prison regulations to ensure care for inmates suffering from serious or terminal illnesses, legal protection for the poor and to grant regular contact with families and loved ones.
The pontiff’s visit to Regina Coeli Prison will be his second to a penal institution in Rome.
On Dec. 27, 1983, he went to Rebibbia Prison where Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish terrorist who had shot and seriously wounded him on May 13, 1981, was being held. In a dramatic post-Christmas meeting in Agca’s prison cell, the pope gave his forgiveness to his assailant.
With the pope’s approval, the Italian government granted Agca clemency June 13 and extradited him to Turkey to face charges for assassinating a newspaper editor.
John Paul issued his message as the Italian Parliament debated a government-sponsored move to grant a general pardon reducing all existing prison terms by three years. This would provide for the release of about one-third of the 53,538 inmates presently held in 257 penal institutions designed to accommodate 42,852 people.
The 140-year-old Regina Coeli Prison holds 950 inmates in facilities intended for 600. Many of the inmates are foreigners, and they include a number of Muslims.
Overcrowding was held partly to blame for mounting tensions in Italian prisons. Inmates set fire to mattresses in Rebibbia Prison earlier this week, and disturbances also were reported in prisons at Bologna to the north and Trapani on the island of Sicily.
DEA END POLK
