Archbishop Chaput celebrates Mass behind bars

As church settings go, it was grim - high cinder block walls, surrounded by tall fences and coils of razor wire.

No light shone through stained-glass images of Christ. And no choir boys appeared in white, their places assumed by unsmiling officers in black shirts who kept watch on a congregation arrayed in a prison gym.

Into that environ stepped the archbishop of Philadelphia, who on Thursday offered a message of faith, hope and charity to inmates at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. The hour-long mass drew about 80 inmates, all wearing standard sky-blue shirts and navy pants, the only adornments the tattoos on their arms and necks.

"It's a special event," one inmate enthused.

"It's a show," another griped.

Archbishop Charles Chaput came as part of the Archdiocese's Prison Ministry Program, which carries out the biblical mandate to visit people in jail. The church maintains a presence in prisons located within its boundaries.

"God loves us," Chaput told the men, who sat before him in plastic chairs. "He loves us each individually, whether we're sinners or not, whether we're in prison or not."

Prison staffers attended the mass too, stopping Chaput afterward to pose for pictures. Inmates shook his hand, seeking a word of comfort from the leader of their faith.

Almost all the prisoners there had "CATH" stamped on their identification wristbands.

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Archbishop Chaput celebrates Mass behind bars