Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Caracas (Agenzia Fides) - The creation of the Ministry to manage the prisons has been hailed by the People's Defender, Gabriela Ramirez and by the Archbishop of Caracas, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, who expressed the hope that this initiative will put an end to the crisis in prisons in the Country, which has caused the deaths of more than four thousand prisoners in the last ten years.
Cardinal Urosa has asked the Minister Iris Varela to take measures to improve conditions for more than 49 000 prisoners in the Country. In the past months Cardinal Urosa and the Bishops of Venezuela had launched appeals to resolve the situation of national prisons, especially after the terrible acts of violence in June in the prison "Internado Judicial Capital El Rodeo I" in Guatire, in the State of Miranda (see Fides 18/6/2011).
Cardinal Urosa Savino had claimed that "Only with effective changes to the country's prison system this problem will be resolved" (see Fides 24/6/2011).
" New prisons have to be built. This problem has to be faced and urgently. It is not possible that prisons as they are now, are controlled by the most violent prisoners" , the Cardinal said yesterday, after the Sunday Eucharistic celebration in the Metropolitan Cathedral. (EC) (Agenzia Fides 08/01/2011)
