December 14, 2025 was the Jubilee for Prisoners.
I am one of several priests who regularly celebrate Mass for our incarcerated brothers and sisters in the Raleigh Diocese. We visit several prisons and serve alongside a team of very committed and specially trained deacons and lay men and women. The lay volunteers bring Communion, lead prayer services and prepare the men and women to receive the sacraments.
A year ago Bishop Luis Rafael Zarama baptized and confirmed an inmate on death row. Now five death row inmates regularly attend weekly Mass. In another prison, four other inmates were baptized and confirmed this past year and there are nine inmates preparing for baptism and/or confirmation within a few weeks.
At the start of this Jubilee Year of Hope, Pope Francis opened a Holy Door at Rome’s Rebibbia Prison and celebrated Christmas Mass with the inmates. On Dec. 26, 2024, he said, “The first Holy Door I opened was at Christmas in St. Peter’s. I wanted the second one to be here, in a prison … I wanted each of us here, inside and out, to have the possibility of throwing open the door of our hearts and understanding that hope doesn’t disappoint … Do not lose hope. Hold on to the anchor of hope.”
We who serve the incarcerated feel that they minister to us. These brothers and sisters radiate hope. Prison can be an utterly hopeless place: the hardship and routine of prison life; confronting their broken and ugly past; if they get out, not much possibility for a promising future; often feeling they are beyond forgiveness; the exile and abandonment. How do they do it? These brothers and sisters reveal the depths of God’s love and mercy.
These “messages of hope” are verbatim from inmates in five prison institutions of diverse security levels which I visited recently. (In total, 70 inmates attended those Masses.) The inmates were thankful to think their words might help someone, and the prison authorities approved this publishing. The names were changed to respect privacy and to highlight that everyone is called to holiness, to follow Jesus as his friends, and to bear witness as his apostles.
The messages
Matthew: My hope is that the bickering in this country ends and that the divide be settled … that people can get on with their lives and know that later God will ask to us render account. How can we be fine with this? Families don't even talk to each other because of differing political views or who you voted for ...
Mark: We don't have to hope when we can see things. We hope when we can't see. I hope that the Father fulfills every promise he made to me and that he brings me safely home to him.
Luke: Hope and faith go together. They equal confidence. We know the promises of Our Father. Hope is aspiration and desiring something to happen. We are certain that it will happen because of our prayer and faith and the love of Jesus and Mary.
John: I relate my hope to my life here (in prison) and how it relates to my wife and teenage children. My kids are impressionable. I speak to them about my experience here and how I'm handling it with confidence and seeing it as part of God's plan for me. It's not a punishment. It's part of my journey and how I face it in a positive way. Adversity is not always negative … it can be positive.
Peter: I have hope for everyone here in prison. I have not been here that long and I’m finishing my sentence. I have hope for myself that there is a plan for me when I get out. But there are some who have been here for a long time. When they are released, they will be forced to start over again. But it’s a completely new world out there. That’s scary. But God has a plan and will guide us on that path.
Andrew: Hope here? My hope is that we forgive ourselves and not dwell on the past. Jesus tells us that we should do this. Trust him. Trust that he will forgive us. And then we have to forgive ourselves.
Bartholomew: I hope to be released and be with my loved ones. God will come to our aid. He will change me and make me the man he created me to be.
James: We all stumble and fall. We have to keep picking ourselves up and continue. I have hope.
Paul: All my life I was raised Catholic, but I lived angrily. I'm coming back now and I have a sense of peace. All happens for a reason that we may not understand. My prayers are always answered.
Thomas: Hope means that we understand we can't be perfect. We fall short and we can turn away. Forgiveness is the key message of hope. God forgives and so we forgive ourselves and others.
Phillip: I have terminal 4 cancer. Prison saved my soul. I have never been closer to God. Others here have hope of going home and being with family. I'm not going home. I have a gorgeous family whom I love. But my hope is in God. He saved my soul. I want nothing to do with this world.
Martha: My family is praying for me. I want to be with them. That's my hope. I never want to return here.
Magdalen: My hope is that God gives all of us spiritual freedom which is more important than physical freedom.
Lazarus: Hope is to continue to move forward even when it's in difficult circumstances. I hope to see my mother and be a good man. I've been down very dark roads and fell into deep depression. Mental illness is real. Replaying the past and all that we should have done differently and how we should have been better could kill a person. Depression and regret take a real toll on the person. It’s important to do the daily things: Get up, eat chow and get ourselves together. Coming here to Mass and sharing experiences with others really helps.
Veronica: Our hope now is the same as it was before we came to prison. It's only magnified. We have time here to think about what our hopes were. Now we pursue our hopes in a different way. It's easier. Coming to religious services is obviously the easy path, but many of us were missing that outside. Hope is when you feel yourself moving forward even from prison. The inner moving forward feeling is easier and different from the striving and reaching as we used to do …
Timothy: I'm 63, I worked hard and I had a lot of nice things … I was 13 months without Mass, but I have been coming regularly since last January. I have a lot of hope. God is in my life. I will make a new run in life. I have a new hope. I want to help others. I want to get involved in Catholic charities when I get out of here. I've been clean and sober for four years. I used to tell my mother I'll turn to God when I'm 60, and, well, I did!
Anna: Faith goes hand in hand with hope. It's normal to have doubts, “Will this really happen?” Faith brings the hope — the door will open. With hope you feel the movement, and see things open up.
Lawrence: This is the jubilee year of hope. It's my first year here. I hope that I'll never come back here. Keep focused and block out the negative. I don't ever want to come back here.
Francis (beamed with a smile! He went to confession, was baptized, confirmed, and received First Holy Communion — that very day in prison): “Today is four years to the day since I came into the prison system. I am so much better today than before.”
Augustine (quoted Martin Luther King Jr.): We need to accept the finite disappointments and never lose the infinite hope.
Michael: How good it is to have fellowship with all the other brothers here at Mass. The connection with each other keeps us strong in hope.
Benedict: A friend here in prison told me today that he had lost hope. All the doors were locked. But we spoke of Pope Francis who visited prisons frequently and he reminded us never to lose hope.
Therese (quoted St. Therese of Lisieux): I have blind hope in God's mercy.
Lydia: No one would choose this [prison], but it's a blessing. As St. Paul says [in Philippians 3:8], I consider it all trash except knowing Jesus Christ.
Monica: There is a common expression: I wasn't busted, I was rescued.
Dominic: Without hope in salvation what else do I have to hope for?
John Paul: Hope keeps you going in time of adversity and makes you trust in the Lord. Without hope there is no future. I'm at peace here. I accept God's will. If I get out it's because of God's plan. If not, he has something better for me.
Steven (relayed his story with tears): While the jury was deliberating, I started begging God, ‘Please help me.’ Within a minute of that prayer, the marshals entered. I felt God answered me! Then I was stunned at the guilty, on all counts, ruling! But that, as it should have been! God answered those prayers. I am trying to be a good person.
A reflection from Father John Curran
I am on this journey of life alongside everybody else and I am made of the “same stuff.” I have beautiful experiences for which I am ever grateful. And I have been blessed with a beautiful family and parish community at St. Matthew. But in many ways, I am spoiled. Not everyone received the love, support, education and friendship which I have always had. It was all an unmerited gift from God and others. But many others didn’t know God, and they did not have a loving family or parish. I also recognize that I have moments of fear, weakness, darkness and sin. It can be hard for me to face the truth that I, a priest who really should know better, can deeply offend God, others and myself. There are things in my past which I wish I could change, but I can’t. But I know where to turn — the Eucharist, sacrament of reconciliation, Mary and counsel/support. For me, the incarcerated brothers and sisters give amazing witness to God’s abounding love and mercy. Forgiveness is real and conversion is possible. A prison cell can become a chapel. Jesus “canonized” the first saint, a criminal: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:43).
On Dec. 1, Pope Leo XIV said, “ … even where the world sees only walls and criminals, we see the tenderness of the Father, who never tires of forgiving, reflected in the eyes of the prisoners, sometimes lost, other times illuminated by new hope. And this is true: we see the face of Jesus reflected in those who suffer ...”
Writer’s note:
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The total incarcerated in 2025 was nearly 1.9 million. There are approximately 36,000 inmates in North Carolina’s federal and state prisons, according to statistics from the Bureau of Prisons and Department of Adult Corrections.