Scottish Catholic Observer

A Scottish prison chaplain was a guest of honour when Pope Francis held a special Jubilee Year Mass for prisoners in St Peter’s Basilica last Sunday, November 6.

The Holy Father told more than one thousand prisoners who had been given special permission to attend that all people ‘have made mistakes,’ and urged them to never give up hope in God’s mercy.

He later called on political leaders across the world to respect the dignity of inmates and offer them amnesty whenever possible.

Fr Brian Gowans, the chaplaincy advisor to the Scottish Prison Service, and parish priest of St Joseph’s, Burntisland, said it was a magnificent experience.

“The papal altar servers were all prisoners and they were so professional,” he said. “As well as the Sistine Choir there was another choir made up of prisoners and former prisoners and they were great. Among the testimonies were a prisoner and his victim. They exchanged their story together and with true forgiveness they hugged and kissed at the high altar.”

Pope’s gift

A veteran of prison chaplaincy, Fr Gowans is also president of the International Commission of Catholic Prison Pastoral Care (ICCPPC), and when he met with Pope Francis after the Mass he gave him a booklet from ICCPPC written by many chaplains to mark 65 years of the organisation.

“I also presented the booklet Faith Inside, a new RCIA course for prisoners written by Fr Eddie McGhee, and a sculpture of the front cover of the ICCPC booklet,” he said. “The Pope thanked me for my work and gave me a rosary.”

Ayrshire priest Fr McGhee’s Faith Inside, a catechesis for prisoners, has just been published, and he said he was ‘well chuffed’ the Holy Father had received a copy.

Year of mercy

During the Mass (above), Pope Francis stood before a congregation of 1,000 prisoners, and their families, from 12 countries, as well as prison chaplains and volunteers. The event was part of the Vatican’s Holy Year of Mercy, which comes to an end later this month.

“Today we celebrate the Jubilee of Mercy for you and with you, our brothers and sisters who are imprisoned,” he told them. He said that while breaking the law involves paying the price, ‘hope must never falter.’

“Sometimes, a certain hypocrisy leads to people considering you only as wrongdoers, for whom prison is the sole answer,” the Pope said in his homily. “We don’t think about the possibility that people can change their lives. We put little trust in rehabilitation… into society. But in this way we forget that we are all sinners and often, without being aware of it, we too are prisoners.”

Pope Francis has made it a mission of his papacy to encourage greater compassion for the world’s most vulnerable people, including the poor, the sick, the elderly, migrants and prisoners. He has also urged governments to consider granting a Holy Year amnesty to prisoners, to find alternatives to incarceration and, at the very least, to abolish the death penalty.

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—This story ran in full in the November 11 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.