40 countries to participate in Men’s Rosary on Oct. 7

Santiago, Chile, Jan 13, 2018 / 04:00 am (ACI Prensa).- As Pope Francis prepares to visit Chile next week, the inmates at San Joaquin Women’s Penitentiary Center in Santiago are cleaning, decorating, and preparing for what they believe is a providential papal visit.

The Pope will visit the prison on Jan. 16, making a 40-minute stop to meet with the women there.

Ever since the Holy Father’s visit was confirmed, the 620 women incarcerated in the prison – serving sentences for drug trafficking, homicide, robbery or other crimes – have been planning for the encounter.

“People are suffering here, there’s a lot of pain, and that the Pope would come and remember us means that God has remembered us,” said inmate Nelly Dominguez. “I believe it’s the providence of God, nothing less.”

Dominguez is serving a 15-year sentence for drug trafficking. “For me, this visit is a before-and-after,” she told ACI Prensa. “Not just in my life but in the lives of all the people here.”

“I am in the process of changing, I’m working on my spiritual life, I intend to change,” she said.

“I think good things are coming for Chile,” she added, describing the Pope’s upcoming visit as “a very great blessing from God.”

Dominguez and the prison’s other inmates are making the paper decorations for the garlands that will decorate the gymnasium where the Pope will meet with the prisoners. They are constructing 7,000 paper doves and 5,000 flowers.

As part of the program, the prison choir will perform a song composed by the inmates. Entitled “Shepherd who smells of the sheep,” the song talks about life in the prison, and the pain and hopes of the women.

Sister Nelly León, a member of the Congregation of the Good Shepherd, works in the prison. She told ACI Prensa that the time of preparation is one of “a lot of joy, festivity and gladness. It’s a second Advent for us.”

The religious sister said her community has created worksheets entitled “From Forgiveness to Peace” to help the prison population spiritually prepare.

The inmates “feel a special connection with Jesus who welcomes them,” Sister León said. She compared the Pope traveling through Chile and stopping at the prison with Jesus stopping to encounter people at various moments of his earthly life, such as Martha and Mary, the woman caught in adultery, the Samaritan woman at the well, and Veronica during the Way of the Cross.

Sister León will deliver a welcome speech to Pope Francis. She said the first thing she will do is thank the pontiff for “showing his concern for incarcerated women, because he has shown his concern for the poorest of the poor, and because his presence dignifies the lives of people in prison.”

Staff members at the women’s prison agreed that the encounter will be special for everyone involved.

Petty Officer Alicia Contreras, who participates in the prison ministry, said she thinks the visit with renew the faith of all those who participate.

Chile’s national police chief, Jaime Rojas, expressed his hope that the visit will reinforce the country’s commitment to reintegrating released prisoners back into society through education, work and spiritual support. He added that he hopes the visit will “shake up the consciences of Chileans.”

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Flag of Mexico. / Sault Trabanca via Flickr cc by nc sa 2.0

Ciudad Cuauhtemoc, Mexico, Feb 18, 2022 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
A recent video of a flock of blackbirds suddenly plummeting to the ground in Mexico should not be in any way taken as an apoca… […]

Lima, Peru, May 3, 2017 / 12:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a radio interview for the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, a cardinal from Peru discussed the sanctification of work and outlined a typical day in his own life.

“How many hours does a cardinal work?” asked journalist Miguel Humberto Aguirre. “I think all of them,” replied Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani of Lima.

In his weekly Saturday radio program on station RPP April 29, Cardinal Cipriani said that his day usually starts at 5:00 a.m. and normally ends around 10 or 11 at night.

He said that he gets up “early to be able to pray because there’s a moment for prayer, for the Divine Office where there won’t be phone calls or interruptions. So you try to do it first thing in the morning. Very early, I go into the chapel and many times I celebrate Mass” at that time.

Then, the archbishop continued, “comes work itself, and part of the work is to be informed about what’s going on in the country and the world, that is, to read news about the Pope, things about Peru,” and other topics.

Then comes “the office like anybody else: people who want me to bless their house, people who are going to get married, people with some difficulty, times to meet with priests who want to talk, I go to a hospital to bless a facility, I talk with a person who has a problem in their home life, and so on.”

Cardinal Cipriani also said that an important part of his daily work is that spent “praying the Rosary or reading a little theology to keep up to date.”

“I also have to go and attend social obligations. Sometimes a family invites you to some anniversary.” In the end, he reflected, “you spend the entire day serving. My time is for others, I don’t have my own time.”

“That’s the way it is for everybody,” he continued. “In the case of a married man, your time is for your wife, your children and your grandchildren, you don’t close yourself off.”

At the end of the day, he said, “to relax a little bit, I watch NBA basketball.” The cardinal himself was part of Peru’s national basketball team in the 1960s.

The cardinal also touched on the idea of sanctifying our work, pointing to St. Joseph as the patron in this regard.

The first key in seeking to sanctify work is to perform one’s tasks well, whatever they may be. “So right now we’re working on the radio, let’s do it right,” he told the radio host as an example. “May the people listen to us and say ‘it helped me, it was well done, it gave us some insights, it’s been inspirational for us’.”

Similarly, he went on, “the person who plays soccer should play it well, try to score goals, try to win. The person who’s in Congress should try to make proper laws, study the issues, attend your meetings. Do you work well.”

“We spend a lot of time engaged in our work, whether it’s at the office or at home. From the time we have breakfast and get ready, and then when we come back home and take care of the kids. We have to find God there,” he emphasized.

The second key to sanctifying work is found in the virtues, Cardinal Cipriani said.

“And you who are working, how to do you live out honesty, joy, generosity, justice, patience?” he reflected. “Do you do your work because the boss is looking, or do you do it knowing that you must do it well?”

“I sanctify myself if I do the work well, and if I do it before my Creator and my Father,” he emphasized.

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