Volunteers carry the services and allow for expansion, says program coordinator
The B.C. Catholic
Surrey
After more than 30 years of existence, Catholic Charities Justice Services is still growing in local parishes.
“You might think that after developing prison visitation and circles of support and accountability for offenders we could take a rest,” said Maureen Donegan, the CCJS coordinator, “but not a chance.”
CCJS held its 12th annual volunteer support and development day at St. Andrew Kim Parish Oct. 22. Almost 150 volunteers, former prisoners, deacons, and chaplains met to review the programs offered by CCJS, as well as to hear testimonies and experiences.
Donegan said Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, noted in 2012 that the prisons and the people affected by the system required more care. “He gave us long-term goals: extending pastoral care to victims and their families, and to offenders and their families, and fostering education and social justice initiatives.”
As a result of the archbishop’s support, and with the help of many volunteers, CCJS expanded from federal prison visits to include provincial institutions. “What started as a handful of volunteers in the federal institutions has grown, and we now have over 200 volunteers who have responded to the call to serve in so many different ways,” said Donegan.
The programs run by CCJS now include community initiatives such as support for released offenders.
“The recent growth in programs and volunteers is a direct result of the development of parish groups and ministries led by parish liaisons,” Donegan added. “There are now 19 parishes in the archdiocese with prison ministry teams!”
Gabrielle Hoffer, a long-time prison ministry volunteer, said, “As more parishes get liaisons who oversee recruiting and volunteering, our base has grown exponentially. This is something that could grow and grow!”
Parishes have aided the prison ministry in ways other than volunteering and raising funds. “Father Simon Hyunman Shin, the pastor of St. Andrew Kim Parish, allows us to use the facilities for free, and the ladies at the CWL make an amazing smorgasbord for which they don’t charge a dime,” Hoffer said. “The ladies do it as a donation to the ministry.”
The archbishop, who attended the volunteer development day, spoke to the gathering about the importance of both justice and mercy.
“Many clamour for justice, thinking that mercy is simply a way of obliterating wrong-doing and emptying responsibility of any meaning,” he said. This idea of “mercy often carries a sense of weakness and indulgence, acceptable in private and personal relationships, but rather ineffectual in the public realm, where it has no business.”
However, because “God, when He forgives us, accompanies us,” we “are heralds of mercy, and should cultivate this interior attitude of mercy with one another and with all those who in any way are part of the correctional system or suffer from crime.”
