At Mass with the prisoners, the AJA Promise, moments of reflection and conviviality: this is how AJA Borgomanero, Arpino and Foggia wanted to express their belonging to the Vincentian Family.
The Friends of Borgomanero chose to celebrate the Sunday Eucharist with the inmates of the prison of San Vittore in Milan, animating the songs of the Mass. A Friend of Borgomanero wrote to us as follows:
‘The Lord has given us a great gift: freedom, which we can exercise in all the choices of our lives.
Today – 29th September 2024 – our group of Saint Jeanne Antida, accompanied also by a priest and a seminarian, went to Milan, to the San Vittore prison, to animate with song the Sunday Mass in that place where the person’s freedom is precluded by bars and where living together is obligatory with people who are different from you in habits, culture, language.
In these moments, you realise their lack of awareness of wrong choices that lead them to spend days, months, years, imprisoned. In the face of this you feel powerless.
But there is a way: today, the Gospel of the Good Samaritan made us realise that our caring is the example, the stimulus, to share their plight at least with prayer and to sensitise others to do the same. Our faith must be made concrete through the sentiments infused by the Holy Spirit who can do everything, so that he may be the consoler of these people and enlighten them to begin a journey of conversion”.
We would like to point out this closeness to prisoners, a closeness that is repeated every year, by the AJA Group of Borgomanero, at a time when prisoners and warders in Italian prisons are forced to live in humiliating conditions.
Overcrowding stands at 135%, with tragic peaks in some prisons. San Vittore itself has 708 places, but 250 are not available. Currently, 1,041 inmates are housed, with a real overcrowding rate of 230%. Crumbling prisons and degrading conditions can be found in many parts of Italy. For prison guards, excessive workloads, low pay, little training, poor recognition by superiors and the daily complex management of critical events are the order of the day.
It is a repeated alarm that has remained, so far, unheeded.
The AJA Group of Arpino, on the occasion of the feast of St Vincent, together with the Community of the sisters renewed their baptismal promises and the Pledge of Commitment for the AJA charismatic path, during the Eucharistic Celebration.
In Foggia, in the chapel of the Sisters’ house, the AJA group gathered for the celebration of Mass, presided over by Father Angelico, followed by a moment of conviviality.
The group is involved in the spiritual animation of the sick at the hospital in Foggia.
