The Jesuits in English Canada have long had a ministry to prisoners. Such a ministry is very much in fitting with the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Matthew 25 speaks of visiting those in prison as one of the works of mercy. Luke 4 has Jesus quoting from the prophet Isaiah to announce that part of his mission is to free those who are captive. It’s good for all of us to reflect on prisoners and how we can help them to maintain their dignity. The Pope’s Universal Prayer intention for the month of February deals with prisoners: “That prisoners, especially the young, may be able to rebuild lives of dignity.”

Starting in the 1940s, Fr. Harold Bedford, S.J. (1906-2004) spent over thirty years as chaplain at Stoney Mountain Penitentiary near Winnipeg. At that time it was the country’s toughest maximum-security prison. He wrote that, “I went in raw and green. These great prisons are terrible. They are made to dehumanize men, but once I was there, I felt that I should do the best that I could.” He worked tirelessly at gaining the prisoners’ confidence, attending to them in great and small affairs.

By the mid 1950s, he had become the senior chaplain in the country and was having a major influence on government officials and prison reforms in this country. A statement about his influence is that several decades after he left Stoney Mountain and moved on to other rich pastoral ministries in the Toronto area, his death in 2004 was acknowledged with flags at half-mast on correctional institutions across Canada.

Still today, Canadian Jesuits are involved with prisoners and ex-prisoners. Fr. John Matheson, S.J., a former professor at Campion College in Regina, is involved with visiting prisoners and started a program known as Friends on the Outside. The Jesuits in Winnipeg operate Quixote House, a residence where men who have just been released from prison can come and live in a supportive community setting. Jesuits and former inmates live community together, cooking and caring for one another, while all holding down outside work. The ministries in Regina and Winnipeg are helping former inmates to rebuild lives of dignity, as Pope Francis is inviting us to pray.

What does it mean to help prisoners to experience dignity? While most of us have never spent time living in a prison, we probably all know what it is to be held captive and imprisoned. For some it could be being held captive by an addictive behaviour. For others, it could be their imprisonment to expectations they place on themselves. If we dig deep enough, we all know something about imprisonment.

But we probably don’t really know that dehumanization that Fr. Bedford refers to. It’s a state where my dignity is taken from me in all kinds of ways. Despite prison reforms over the decades, we constantly hear stories of indignity and degradation on the inside. Solitary confinement is one example of indignity that has been in the news in recent months as a result of the government refusing to do away with solitary confinement, despite the inquest’s recommendations in light of the suicide of Ashley Smith, a teenager who managed to strangle herself in her cell.

How do we help to bring dignity to prisoners? Not many of us can bring about prison reform, but we can determine our own attitudes. One example is in our refusal to pass judgments on prisoners. We know what we see in the media about the prisoner. But we can never really know what’s going on in their heart and what led to their crime. Can our basic Christian notions of forgiveness and reconciliation be offered to prisoners? That’s a challenge, but Jesus never told us that these things were easy.

And how about after the prisoner is outside? They have a new challenge now. Despite the indignities of being inside, it was a life they knew and could predict. Now that they are outside, they have to start over. The non-judgmental attitude is just as important now. So is reconciliation. I’m ashamed to say that I have never visited Quixote House, but it strikes me that it offers community and a non-judgmental environment. I think that if Fr. Bedford were alive, he’d want to be assigned to minister there.