Sister Zenaida Cabrera’s mission is to bring the table of brotherhood into prisons
A member of the Servants of the Holy Eucharist, she has dedicated more than 20 years of her life to prisoners. Speaking to AsiaNews, she says that something is changing since Marcos Jr became president, but it is still too early for any definitive opinion. The country’s ratio of incarceration is 200 people per 100,000 inhabitants.
Milan (AsiaNews) – Something has changed in the Philippines since the arrival of Ferdinand Marcos Jr as president, “But we can't say yet if the situation is improving; it's too early and we don't know his political agenda,” said Sister Zenaida Cabrera, of the Congregation of the Servants of the Holy Eucharist (SHE), coordinator of Caritas’s programme of assistance to prisoners, speaking to AsiaNews.
Security, inside and outside prisons, is apparently improving six years after former President Rodrigo Duterte launched his “war on drugs” and drug addiction, which, for many observers, was used to target the poor, the marginalised and the president’s opponents, with thousands killed or jailed.
“We see the new policies and understand what collaboration there can be with the Church", says Sister Zeny, as the religious calls herself.
“Our Caritas Ministry of Restorative Justice is directly linked to government agencies because the people we help are in correctional institutions, so we work with the police, the Bureau of Corrections and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP).”
According to a 2019 Amnesty International report, at least 215,000 people are in prison in the Philippines, with a ratio of 200 people incarcerated per 100,000 inhabitants.
Just to mention the latest case, the bodies of more than 170 prisoners were found last November in the New Bilibid Prison, Muntinlupa, south of the capital Manila. The Philippine Justice Department is currently investigating the case.
“They have changed the line-up of people and officers,” said the Sister, who has been working in prisons for over 20 years. “Some are doing their best to gain people's trust and slowly many people are released, also because of prison overcrowding.”
“We were able to recruit some members of the prison police as volunteers," said Sister Zeny with joy and satisfaction. However, the situation has not yet fully returned to normal.
“Before the pandemic, before Covid we were” visiting inmates “at least once a week”, preparing them to reintegrate into society once their sentences had been served.
Then came COVID-19 and the Sisters and volunteers had to halt their work, which in some facilities has not yet resumed.
“We cannot penetrate into the maximum security compounds, but we're going back to other compounds.” In December, for example, Caritas was able to offer food support in medium and low security prisons.
The table of brotherhood is a recurring theme to which Sister Zeny comes back to in order to describe her work with prisoners.
This work was made possible thanks to the support of the Archdiocese of Manila and the individual parishes with whom the Servants of the Holy Eucharist work. The Sisters are based in the Diocese of Novaliches and are active in various detention centres.
"Our charism is to prepare the Lord's table for prisoners according to the culture of ‘Salu Salo’, the Philippine tradition of spending time together at the table with friends and family", adds the Sister.
"We want to give them a second chance to return to life as a reflection of God. Our vocation is to educate them by making them understand that they too are human beings worthy of love and we hope that they can return to their family and their community as children of God.”
"The detainees feel they are far from their natural environment and have no material and moral support," Sister Zeny explains. “They experience humiliation and rejection from families and are worried about the future of their family members. Detention brings sadness, illness or death."
Caritas’s programmes of restorative justice are based on the three Rs: recover, rehabilitate and reintegrate.
"Assistance to prisoners is often not part of government budgets, so prisoners rely on the charity of volunteers and their own families, but in most cases they are very poor. This is why the help of parishes and volunteers is fundamental.”
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