Fr Lombardi, SJ: Pope Benedict XVI and the capacity for mercy
Weekly Editorial by the Director of the Vatican Television Center (CTV), Federico
Lombardi, SJ
Cardinal Martini once observed that a prison is “the reversed
mirror of a society, the space where the contradictions and sufferings of a sick society
emerge”: the troubles of prisoners and their relatives, the suffering of victims and
their relatives, the problems of prison staff, the difficulties for the authorities
– and the questions of legislators, who note how most of the problems that prison
should be solving in fact remain unsolved, if not worsened. The condition of a country’s
prisons is, in short, one of the essential indicators of that country’s state of civilization.
It is therefore natural for the Church to know it has to be present in prisons
– and for Popes too – starting with John XXIII’s historic visit to Rome’s Regina Caeli
prison on December 26th, 1958: a visit during which he spent a little time
with the inmates and with those who share the burden of their incarceration. He listened
to them and gave them a word of comfort. It is no accident that this happens at Christmas
time when we are more in need of stronger acts of solidarity and love.
Concerns
for the economic crisis must not be an excuse to forget the plight of those on the
margins of society, much less a licence to be pitiless towards those who have done
wrong: we can build a fairer and more reasonable society by starting with the least
and the last of our fellows: by trying to reconcile and heal the deepest wounds. Let
us remember the conditions of prisoners in different parts of the world. At the end
of the Synod for Africa, the Pope mentioned the terrible conditions of many African
prisons and reasserted the commitment to fight the death penalty. For the Jubilee
in 2000, John Paul II discreetly but clearly and insistently asked for “a gesture
of clemency” towards prisoners. Has there been such a gesture, or are we still waiting
for it? On Sunday 18 December we are all invited to be with the Pope in spirit at
Rome’s Rebibbia prison.