Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Lilongwe (Agenzia Fides) - "After the initiative of Patrizia Lavaselli to bring the pictures of women who are in the maximum security prison in Zomba to the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, this new adventure is something to be considered miraculous", writes Fr. Piergiorgio Gamba, Monfort missionary, commenting on the album "I have no everything here" performed by the Zomba Prison Band (inmates in the prison in Malawi), and have been nominated for the Grammy Awards that will be awarded on February 15, 2016 in Los Angeles. "A dream, a new stage in the long process of reconciliation with oneself and with the world, a prayer and a cry, but also a sign that Mercy has no boundaries", said the missionary.
In the year of Mercy also other prisons in Malawi, one of the poorest Countries in the world, projects to provide decent living conditions are multiplying. "The population in Malawi doubles every eighteen years to the point of reaching the current seventeen million inhabitants. Of these, about fourteen thousand are being held in the same prisons that already fifty years ago were insufficient. The judicial and penal system remains one of the legacies of the colonial era and is entirely focused on one method: the punishment of the prisoner. A system that dehumanizes the person making him unable to rebuild his life", said Fr. Gamba, who is Chairman of the Prison Fellowship Malawi and member of the Inspectorate of Prisons. Thanks to these assignments Fr. Gamba participates in the drafting of the Annual Report on prisons for Parliament.
Among the initiatives promoted by the missionary there is the renewal of the prison in Ntcheu, a job carried out by the prisoners themselves who "have almost completed the work of a prison where to live with dignity during detention in order to redeem his own life". "A story that aims to help those who have offended and those who have been offended, in the name of Mercy" concludes the missionary. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 23/12/2015)
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