“Knowing one is loved in spite of everything one has done, may change the horizon of one’s life: the true freedom we may offer prison inmates is to enable them to discover themselves responsible for their own actions, and assume responsibility for them to the point of asking for forgiveness from those they have hurt or injured. Only forgiveness may open the way to the future, both to the victims and to the offenders. A world without forgiveness is a world without hope”. With this conviction expressed in a final declaration the national meeting of pastoral workers who perform their mission in prisons at the side of inmates was concluded in recent days at Lourdes: a mission in which some 470 persons are involved in France (laypeople, religious, deacons and priests) divided into teams in the country’s 186 penitentiaries. In France, too, a lively debate on the question of prisons has been conducted over the last few months: numerous reports in the press have raised public awareness on the “shameful” situation in the nation’s prisons. Deputies and senators have visited prisoners, and listened to the views of prison staff, including chaplains of the various confessions. “The reports of the parliamentary commissions says Father Hubert Vigneau, national coordinator of prison chaplains are harsh in their judgement and present a situation shameful to the motherland of human rights. That’s why the new prison law now being prepared is important for the whole of society” and must adds Father Vigneau make provision for a kind of prison that is “dignified and human” and capable of serving the “social reinsertion of prison inmates”.
