Vatican City, 17 February 2016 (VIS) –
Yesterday at 10 a.m. local time (6 p.m. in Rome) the Holy Father
began the last leg of his apostolic trip in Mexico: Ciudad Juarez,
for two centuries the only land passage to the United States. Indeed,
Cuidad Juarez is situated on the Rio Grande, facing the Texan city of
El Paso. The two form a metropolitan area with two million
inhabitants. It is a very developed industrial centre and, according
to various statistics, one of the most violent cities in the world,
due principally to drug trafficking across the border with the United
States. It also has around 950 armed gangs with tens of thousands of
members, and is home to hundreds of Mexican gang members deported
from the United States. During the last four years of the drugs war,
212,000 inhabitants – or around 18 per cent of the population –
abandoned the city. Ciudad Juarez is sadly renowned for the
disappearance of thousands of women, typically from poor families,
who worked in the maquiladoras (clandestine factories). The theme of
the abduction and murder of these women has featured in literature
and cinema, and various associations have been established to defend
women, including "Nuestras hijas de regreso a casa" ("Bring
our daughters back home").
The Holy Father began his day in Ciudad
Juarez with a visit to the CeReSo 3 penitentiary, which formed part
of a project for the requalification of the penal institutions of the
State of Chihuahua, and has been awarded for its observance of
international norms in the field. It houses three thousand detainees
including a limited number of women. Upon arrival Francis greeted the
families of some of the inmates, and proceeded to the chapel where he
was awaited by staff and the priests of the penitentiary's pastoral
service, to whom he addressed some words of thanks for their work.
"You encounter much fragility. Therefore I would like to offer
you this fragile image", he said, referring to the crystal
crucifix he gave to the Centre to commemorate his visit. "Crystal
is fragile, it breaks easily. Christ on the Cross represents the
greatest fragility of humanity; however it is this fragility that
saves us, that helps us, that enables us to keep going and opens the
doors of hope. It is my wish that each one of you, with the blessing
of the Virgin and contemplating the fragility of Christ Who died to
save us, sowing seeds of hope and resurrection".
He was awaited in the Centre's main
courtyard by seven hundred detainees, of whom he greeted around fifty
in person. One of them gave a testimony in which he affirmed that the
presence of the Holy Father was a call to mercy especially for those
who had lost hope in their rehabilitation and for those who had
forgotten that there are human beings in prison. Francis then
addressed those present, remarking first that he could not have left
"without greeting you and celebrating with you the Jubilee of
Mercy", adding that mercy "embraces everyone and is found
in every corner of the world. There is no place beyond the reach of
his mercy, no space or person it cannot touch".
"Celebrating the Jubilee of Mercy
with you is recalling the pressing journey that we must undertake in
order to break the cycle of violence and crime. We have already lost
many decades thinking and believing that everything will be resolved
by isolating, separating, incarcerating, and ridding ourselves of
problems, believing that these policies really solve problems. We
have forgotten to focus on what must truly be our concern: people’s
lives; their lives, those of their families, and those who have
suffered because of this cycle of violence".
"Divine Mercy reminds us that
prisons are an indication of the kind of society we are. In many
cases they are a sign of the silence and omissions which have led to
a throwaway culture, a symptom of a culture that has stopped
supporting life, of a society that has abandoned its children. Mercy
reminds us that reintegration does not begin here within these walls;
rather it begins before, it begins 'outside', in the streets of the
city. Reintegration or rehabilitation begins by creating a system
which we could call social health, that is, a society which seeks not
to cause sickness, polluting relationships in neighbourhoods,
schools, town squares, the streets, homes and in the whole of the
social spectrum. A system of social health that endeavours to promote
a culture which acts and seeks to prevent those situations and
pathways that end in damaging and impairing the social fabric".
"At times it may seem that prisons
are intended more to prevent people from committing crimes than to
promote the process of rehabilitation that allows us to address the
social, psychological and family problems which lead a person to act
in a certain way", he observed. "The problem of security is
not resolved only by incarcerating; rather, it calls us to intervene
by confronting the structural and cultural causes of insecurity that
impact the entire social framework. Jesus’ concern for the care of
the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless and prisoners sought to express
the core of the Father’s mercy. This becomes a moral imperative for
the whole of society that wishes to maintain the necessary conditions
for a better common life. It is within a society’s capacity to
include the poor, infirm and imprisoned, that we see its ability to
heal their wounds and make them builders of a peaceful coexistence.
Social reintegration begins by making sure that all of our children
go to school and that their families obtain dignified work by
creating public spaces for leisure and recreation, and by fostering
civic participation, health services and access to basic services, to
name just a few possible measures. The whole rehabilitation process
starts here".
"Celebrating the Jubilee of Mercy
with you means learning not to be prisoners of the past, of
yesterday. It means learning to open the door to the future, to
tomorrow; it means believing that things can change. Celebrating the
Jubilee of Mercy with you means inviting you to lift up your heads
and to work in order to gain this space of longed-for freedom.
Celebrating the Jubilee of Mercy with you means repeating this phrase
that we heard a little while ago, so well expressed and with such
force: 'When they gave me my sentence ,someone said to me: do not ask
the reason why you are here, but the purpose. And this 'purpose'
keeps us going ahead; it enables us to overcome the barrier of the
social deception that would have us believe that security and order
are obtained only through imprisonment".
"We know that we cannot turn back,
we know that what is done, is done. This is the way I wanted to
celebrate with you the Jubilee of Mercy, because it does not exclude
the possibility of writing a new story and moving forward. You suffer
the pain of a failure, you feel the remorse of your actions and in
many cases, with great limitations, you seek to remake your lives in
the midst of solitude. You have known the power of sorrow and sin,
and have not forgotten that within your reach is the power of the
resurrection, the power of divine mercy which makes all things new.
Now, this mercy can reach you in the hardest and most difficult of
places, but such occasions can also perhaps bring truly positive
results. From inside this prison, you must work hard to change the
situations which create the most exclusion. Speak with your loved
ones, tell them of your experiences, help them to put an end to this
cycle of violence and exclusion. The one who has suffered the
greatest pain, and we could say 'has experienced hell', can become a
prophet in society. Work so that this society which uses people and
discards them will not go on claiming victims".
"As I say these things, I recall
Jesus' words: 'Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to
throw a stone'. I should leave now … in saying these things to you,
I do not do so as if I were in the pulpit, wagging my finger; I do so
on the basis of the experience of my own wounds, errors and sins that
the Lord has wished to forgive and re-educate. I do so on the basis
of the knowledge that, without His grace and my vigilance, I could
easily repeat them. Brothers, I always ask myself, as I enter a
prison, 'Why them and not me?'. And it is a mystery of divine mercy.
But we all celebrating this divine mercy today, looking ahead with
hope".
Finally, the Pope addressed all the
staff and those who undertake any type of work that brings them into
contact with inmates, urging them to remember their potential to be
"signs of the heart of the Father", and adding, "We
need one another; as our sister said to us, recalling the Letter to
the Hebrews: let us feel we are imprisoned alongside them".
Before giving his blessing, he invited
those present to pray a moment in silence: "Each one knows what
he wants to say to the Lord; each person knows what he wants to be
forgiven for. But I ask you, in this silent prayer, let us open our
hearts to be able to forgive the society that has not been able to
help us and that has often led us to err. From the depths of our
hearts, may each one of us ask God to help us believe in his mercy".
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