Maureen Donegan hopes to have liaisons in most parishes in five years as this ministry grows
The B.C. Catholic
The number of Catholics visiting the imprisoned in the Lower Mainland has nearly doubled over the last year, so the prison ministry of the archdiocese is calling on parishes to take a bigger role in leading this corporal act of mercy.
“The needs, as we have expanded in the last year, are huge,” said prison ministry director Maureen Donegan.
Last year 110 volunteers were visiting prisoners, talking with released offenders, and participating in other outreach projects. Now there are 200.
“Administratively and recruitment-wise, it’s been myself and Germaine Solaiman” running prison ministry operations for the whole archdiocese.
“When I started 13 years ago, we had four Catholic volunteers. Now we have all of 200,” Donegan said. “We can’t expand without other people participating in leadership.”
As part of a long-term plan, Donegan has launched a campaign to have prison ministry leaders in most parishes within five years. They would be the local face of the ministry and help out with volunteer recruitment, training, and special projects, liaising with her.
For example, she said, leaders in parishes in the Fraser Valley might liaise with nearby federal prisons. Leaders in parishes with high schools could speak to students about Catholic social teaching, while others could take charge of the annual Christmas card and calendar drive.
“Without parish individuals to help us in a bigger way, none of these things will really get moving.”
So far there are 12 such leaders – they refer to them as liaisons – working with Donegan.
She also dreams of setting up a ministry to victims of crime.
Gabrielle Hoffer is the liaison at St. Ann’s in Abbotsford. Along with helping recruit new volunteers, her special role is to provide stories about prison ministry for media.
“There’s lots of need,” she said. “There are a couple of institutions that don’t have a Catholic presence at all,” though about 25 per cent of their inmates are at least nominally Catholic.
The idea of having liaisons on the parish level came from a suggestion from Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, in a speech in 2012.
“One of the goals of the archbishop was that the parishes take on more of a leadership role so they each have their own presence and can do some of the processing, which is getting to be too big a job for one person to do.”
Processing one new volunteer, including all the necessary paperwork, security checks, and training, takes in total 44 hours, Donegan has calculated. It can take six to eight months before a new volunteer gets inside a prison, and all that time someone needs to handle the process.
Hoffer added that prison ministry involves much more than going inside a prison or helping released offenders integrate into society.
For example, one parish has launched a prayer ministry to pray for intentions prison inmates have anonymously submitted.
“There are over 1,000 people involved in this right now, prisoners and people praying for them. It’s amazing. It’s a wonderful thing.”
Hoffer said volunteers, including those interested in becoming liaisons, are welcome to an information workshop March 12 at St. Andrew Kim Parish.
More information about the ministry is available at www.rcav.org.
