Spiritual Warfare: Unpacking The Battle Of Good & Evil With Father John Farao
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Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Finding Genius Podcast. My guest today is very interesting, Father John Farrell. He's part of the Diocese of Monterey. He's a prison chaplain in San Luis Obispo. We're going to talk about the topic of good and evil and how to be on the right side of it. John's got a really interesting background. He was born on the Azores Islands that are part of Portugal. He's a Christian.

Came to the U.S. when he was very, very small. Grew up in Santa Monica. Got a Bachelor's of Science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in Agricultural Management. After college, he joined the Conventual Franciscans, receiving a Master's Degree in Divinity from the Dominican Pontifical School of Philosophy.

and Theology at Berkeley, California. And Father John has worked for 16 years as a parish priest, twice as a pastor before he started his work as a state chaplain. So I think this is going to be a great call. So welcome, Father. Thank you for coming. Oh, it's my pleasure to be with you and discuss, you know, what I do and encourage people in their journey, their walk with God.

So what made you want to go into prison ministry? It just seems like a very scary place that's full of probably a lot of evil. Well, I hate to admit that it wasn't my idea. My boss called me up one day. I was taking a couple of months off, kind of overextended myself at a parish. He said he had a priest who was living out in the country in this little church, and he was turning 80 years old, and he didn't want him living there by himself anymore. Okay.

And so he said, well, go out there, you know, be good company for him. And by the way, find a job because the church can't afford two priests. That's all. All right.

So this is the middle of California, and it's a good hour to the next big town. And so I get out there, and there's a bunch of prisons around there. Apply to one prison, they turn me down. Apply to the other prison, and they turn me down. And so the state was just finishing building and activating a brand new hospital for those who had abused children, rapists, and child abusers. They were...

for a Catholic priest, part-time. And I remember sitting there saying, really? I can't get a job in a prison? The only place that will hire me right now is the hospital for rapists and child abusers. I was, shall we say, a bit disappointed in that. I guess it's hard not to feel like what's wrong with you. That seems to be the only job that you wanted for.

And so I was there for about two years. And then a prison that we have had Franciscans at over the years became available. The priest was going to retire. And because I was already in the system as a state chaplain, I requested a transfer and ended up at a prison that the Franciscans have been chaplains at for 40 or 50 years, almost

almost from the very beginning of the prison. So I had 7,500 guys when I started there. Just recently, the state closed half of the prison because it was very old and very rotten and kind of falling apart. So I've been there. I think I'm starting my 18th year. So what was it like when you first started working with the rapists and child molesters and all that? I mean, as people would say, it's the worst of the worst. What was your attitude going in and what did you discover early on?

Well, you know, it's a brand new building. So with brand new facilities, they bring just a few guys in at a time. So our first crew was like 50 guys. And they brought over the best of the best at the beginning. You know, they behaved, they got along, you know, stuff like that. And I remember thinking to myself, what am I really going to share with these guys? How can I really be of help to them? And I remember just sitting down in my office one day and saying, yeah, I'm just going to

Proclaim the gospel and trust that the Lord is going to do what the Lord wants to do there.

It takes a while to build confidence with people in an institution. It's kind of like a hospital prison. And so I was just getting, shall we say, to know them and them getting to know me before I transferred out. It was a very interesting environment because on one side, you have people who had abused children. And then the other side, you had people who abused adults. And those two sides

don't like one another. Okay? It's pretty obvious that there was just a huge chasm personality difference. Well, I can see if you were an abuser of children, why would you not like someone that's an abuser of adults? I can see the other way. Yes, it's kind of funny, but you know. Most of the guys who abused the young that are

I knew were kind of on the timid side, okay? Much more kind of manipulative. Those who had treated women poorly were much more aggressive, had much harder edge to them. Oh, so they were like from a dominance perspective, and then the domolester people were from a hide-and-seek, sneaky perspective, I guess. Yeah, they're very different personality-wise and obviously,

The adults who had taken advantage of females did not like the guys who had been involved with children. And they would kind of leave one another alone, you know. I wonder if the, you know, from the Gospels, remove the plank from your own eye before you try to remove the moat from your brother's eye came up a lot. Sure, but shall we say neither one of these groups are, it takes a lot of self-reflection to do that.

And people in these situations often have very strong shields, very strong unwillingness to look at their own problems. So it was always very fascinating who had the tempers and who did not. What did you see? How did the Lord act on these people? Did you see any amazing transformations or things? Or was it more of a very slow incremental improvement if there was any?

You know, I think the Lord works as fast as people let him. And most of these guys had been in either prisons for a while. They got transferred to hospitals. And it takes them a while to trust people. And I wasn't there long enough because when I got there, they in a shift of like 50 people. And then it'd be another couple of months and they bring in another 50. By the time I left, there was like 500 guys there. Oh, wow.

And most of them hadn't known me that long. And it takes a while for them, anybody in an institution, you know, to be comfortable and to really want to share. That doesn't come easy for men in any perspective. What was the goal of the chaplaincy? Was the church there to do certain things or was the state there with what they wanted? Like, what were the goals of your ministry? The state has to provide resources

religious service are the First Amendment right? And because you're incarcerating people, so they can't go anywhere to service, so you have to provide the service to come into the prison. So the state, normally in different institutions, whether it's

hospitals, prisons, developmental disabled places where you have people who are basically locked in. Higher chaplains, usually Catholic, Protestant, Jewish,

Muslim Native American is the ideal mix. And then we provide services. We help people with their spiritual concerns. Like for the Jewish community, they have very strict kosher laws they have to follow. So we try to be very instrumental in making sure that, you know, the Jewish community has the meals that they're required by their faith to eat. Just like the Muslims have certain meals

meals, halal meals that they're supposed to eat. So the state kind of hires chaplains to keep them out of lawsuits.

because they're denying people the practice of their first amendment right of the expression of religion that's they hire there's about 35 institutions i think in the state of california not including federal institutions that normally hire chaplains yeah and um

We go in and basically the church says you minister to the staff as well as those who are living there equally. So I've always been told from the church that my assignment is those who work there as well as those who live there. That's good.

Because it's hard to work in those kind of environments. It's very intense, a lot of structure, a lot of rules that they have to follow. And, you know, tempers can be rather quick in environments like that. So how did this change your own personal faith in God and how did it affect you, you believe, you know, this early part of the ministry before the military?

Well, you know, when I started working in the state institution, it became very interesting to see who would approach, who would talk to me, who was interested in anything having to do with religion, staff, and those who were living there. And a lot of people would just kind of leave me alone because they didn't know what to do with me because they didn't practice faith themselves. So they...

Exactly how I fit into this institution because, you know, they don't go to church on the weekends or have... Did any of the staff feel like you're being too nice to the prisoners? The police, the correctional staff, always feel like church is going to let them get away with stuff, that we're going to be too lenient, that we're not going to...

follow the rules. So they're always a little suspicious that the chapels are going to get played, getting taken advantage of. And so you have to be very careful to make sure we follow the rules.

and encourage the guys, hey, this is what procedure is. This is what policy is. Doesn't mean I like it, but as a state employee, I have to follow the policies and procedures like everybody else. They'll let you go. They'll terminate you for not following state procedures.

And so that they know, okay, I don't play any games here. Okay, if this is the rule, this is the rule. I'll give you what the state says you're entitled to. Don't ask me for things that you know you're not entitled to that. You're just going to cause a lot of problems with the state and me. And I have enough complicated things to do. I don't need them on my case for not following the rules.

Right. Gotcha. Any really interesting or amazing experiences that happened to you? Or was it not until the prison ministry that you had enough time to really have a feel for it and be able to explain it more of it? You know, what really happened to me is that it took about five years in the prison where I

I felt accepted for a long time. There are a lot of volunteers who come in and out of the chapels. And so the staff sees a lot of different faces and it takes them a while to figure out, okay, who's the chaplain? Does he run a good ship in there? Do I trust that stuff is not happening in there? And slowly, you know, officers would come and say hello or ask questions or

Or I'd find out that, you know, certain people were having difficulties at home. And so I would, you know, I would ask them how they're doing and what's going on. And they'd be a little surprised by that. Well, I thought you were here for the, you know, for the incarcerated people. I said, no, I'm here for everybody.

I know when I first started in the prison, one of the officers I would come in with was rather rough and gruff. And I didn't understand why he seemed to be giving me a hard time. And so I just kind of let it go. And it actually took me like three, four years. And finally, one day, he just said hello to me.

in a nice way. I said, hello. And I just looked at him and I said, so what's different? He goes, what do you mean? He goes, you were rather curt and not too gracious to me for the longest time. And he said, well, you know, I was taking care of my dad at home. And so I was here at the prison all day and then I'd run home to take care of my dad and he wasn't doing well.

And I wasn't handling it well. I said, oh, so that's why you seem like you're a little curt. And Seth goes, yeah, okay.

I thought I had done something, you know, to upset you or something. No, no, I was not dealing well with the fact that my dad's in my house and I'm the only one helping to take care of him and he's not going to be with me for very long. So sometimes you kind of have to wait out the bumps in the road. There's a lot of divorce among people who work in institutions, you know? Why do you think that is? There's a real high stress there.

A lot of guys on high blood pressure. It's a very, it's a high alert, always on high alert, expecting the worst to happen. So people become hypervigilant, exhausted and all that.

Absolutely. And then they give a big conference for us on hypervigilance. And they say, you know, it takes at least two days to unwind from hypervigilance. And I've noticed that in myself. So like today is my second day off. I go back to work tomorrow. I'm just beginning to really feel unwind, unwound. And at the same time,

I'm thinking about going to work tomorrow. It's like I need to do and get my mind kind of. So you're never really, it's not enough time to really totally bring yourself back to just baseline where you're not

On all the time, waiting for the next shoe to drop, the next emergency, the next situation. I gotcha. I think police are like that all the time. And I'm not sure that would be high blood pressure and revved up all the time. All right. So this first ministry then quickly turned into a prison ministry. What was that like? What did you do there with the prison system? What do you do?

Well, we have mass every day I'm there. We run catechism programs. We run Catholic education. Currently, I'm running one of the only groups in the state for men who are sexually abused as boys who come together in kind of a support group and talk through what happened to them. And we get about 15 in a class that runs for about 20 weeks. I meet Sunday after service and

share a lot about stuff that they've kept buried inside for most of their life, a part of their life.

And they're kind of beginning to understand, so how did this affect my growth, my development, the rest of my life? And most of the guys who start the group don't think it had a huge effect on them. And then by the end of the group saying, this changed the whole trajectory of my life. That's great.

Oh yeah. It's been very powerful to be part of it as we're having, we're in the middle of our sixth group that we have had. And some of these guys who come in and just like, yeah, I'm not going to tell anybody about any of this stuff. And by about the fifth week, they can't stop talking about how things affected them and what's, how life is different now that they can talk about stuff. Yeah. So what's, again, what did you, did people think that because you're a priest, oh, you're a good guy and what

We're bad guys because we're in here. And therefore, like they did that hamper your interactions. Do you feel like people were looking at you that way? Well, you know, the interesting thing about being in the chapel in a prison is that prisoners only come to you when they want religious stuff because there isn't other stuff I can give them. OK, well, if you're not religiously minded, then the chapel has nothing for you. So you never go there.

Okay. So a lot of the guys, they're into violence, into gang stuff on the yard, into stuff. They don't come into the chapel because they don't think I got anything that's of value to them.

Is there peer pressure from people that don't go to the chapel saying why you go there for work? A lot of that I get a lot of because the guys on the yard don't understand how faith can improve their life, how it can have transformative power. Okay, you can't get anything there. They can't do anything for you. They think, honestly, that a lot of people at chapel are just wasting their time. Mm-hmm.

Because they've never experienced the power of God to heal things and transform. Once in a while, a guy who comes in who's had some kind of transformation in his life, and he comes into the chapel and he just goes, I need to change things and I don't know where to start.

And he has some vague recollections that, yeah, he went to church with grandma a few times and he really liked it, but never pursued that. And so now that he's in prison and his life is a mess, he starts looking for, well, what can help me change? So what are some amazing transformations you've seen that you can speak about? It's about guys kind of discovering who they really are.

who they were as kids before life got bad got hard got me okay i guess my favorite analogy is you can take any puppy and make him into a junkyard dog it doesn't take a lot to make a puppy a mean dog

making not trust. And when these guys are willing to tell you really how they grew up and what's happened in their life, you're not exactly surprised that they're in prison. Okay. Not exactly surprised that things have been that bad for them. You know, I could not imagine some of the experiences they've had. Sure. Terrible. And,

And then you're kind of like, okay, well, I was a kid and that happened to me. Of course, I would be distant from people and not trusting people. And then the gang offers you a place to fit in that looks out after you, makes sure you have food, makes sure you have food.

Make sure you have clothing where your family has really dropped the ball or the family is where they got introduced to drugs and all that stuff. So then they go to the street looking for something that's willing to help them, not knowing the price they're going to pay.

Most of the inmates who I get to know who were a big part of gangs on the street will tell me when they're finally kind of honest that, you know, the gang life took all kinds of stuff. It really didn't do anything for me. And when I came to prison, it wasn't like they were there helping my mom. It wasn't like...

they were there taking her to the doctor or helping her pick up groceries or helping her, you know, gangs talk about, you know, oh, we're family, we're this, we're that. But once one of their guys goes into prison, it can't do anything for them. You know, it's like, oh, you know, you're not important to us. Until you come out, we can put you back to work. Or just like,

But you're not going to help my mom? You're not going to be their family if something happens? And that's when they really kind of wake up. They're like, wait a minute, they've just taken a lot. And when I really need them, it's not like they come up with money for a lawyer. They come up with anything. They're just kind of like, wave them goodbye. Okay, we'll see you when you come out. And then a lot of the guys realize, you know, I've been played. They've really taken advantage of me.

And I didn't realize to what extent that happened. So I have a lot of interesting conversations now that I've been there long enough to have a reputation that they can talk to me about stuff and it doesn't go anywhere, that they can trust me with a lot of what's happened in their life. Because a lot of the guys who are in prison, about a third of them where I am, have to go to the board.

and receive approval from the board to be paroled, found worthy, suitable to come back into society. And a lot of these guys, they've been down at least 20 years. And from the day they got arrested, got the handcuffs on them, they just kept things inside because you don't want people to know your business in city jail or county jail or prison because they'll use it against you. They'll hurt you with it. They'll make fun of it.

So they keep all this stuff inside. I call them my turtles. Got a really tough shell on the outside and a lot of soft stuff in the center. And because they've buried all the what happened in their feelings, when they have to sit across the table, usually video screen from the board, and they start asking, well, how did this all happen? The guys admit.

I don't know how to answer that because they've never really done a deep dive of reflection in their life. And just like, yeah, how did I end up here? And you can say, well, this week, that day, just, oh, no, it started way before that day.

It started years before that. The day was kind of like the period at the end of the sentence, but a lot of stuff led up to that. And they just look at me like they don't understand. And so we go through often a very long process

number of days where they just kind of lay out their childhood and how they grew up and things. And we just start making connections about, oh, this happened and this happened and that happened. And finally, they just stare at me. It's kind of like kids when they used to connect the dots. And after you connect the dots, you stand back and you look at the picture and you kind of see the picture. A lot of these grown men in prison have never really stood back and wanted to look at childhood because it was painful, wanted to look at

early experiences as young men. And then when life started unraveling, yeah, why did I go along with that? Why couldn't I walk away, you know?

You know, you mentioned in your bio looking at good and evil. You know, what flashed into my head is I wonder if some of the prisoners, you know, had learned through the Gospels that everyone's a sinner and everyone needs redemption. And then they look at themselves and they look at people on the outside. I wonder how they judge their sin versus like just some random person on the outside. You know, that's not in prison. Well, everybody in prison is incredibly hard on themselves. And I think...

Their families from childhood have been really hard on themselves. And so when I talk to them about what happened, self-forgiveness is very hard. They really struggle believing that God will forgive them. Because most of them have burned all the bridges with their families, so family or anybody close to them. We have currently like 2,500 guys at the prison where I'm at. About 80% of the guys in the prison don't get visits.

Oh, wow. So the state has finally given them unlimited free telephone calls. So they connect with family and friends that way. That's good. That's good. But when you think you could be in prison 10, 20, 30 years and never have a visit from family. Yeah, that's horrible. Oh, yeah. And so then if they're not careful, so why would I change? What's out there for me? Who really wants me back in their life?

Oh, interesting. Okay. I didn't know about that. I didn't think about that. So a bunch of nuns started this program in California where it's called Get on the Bus. It brings the kids of dads into prison to see their dads. For the most part, dads who haven't had a visit of their kids in years, if ever. Yeah.

And I was there first few years when it started. And the thing I would notice in the guys is they wanted to go out there once a year to just show the kids that they were doing better, that they were trying to be a better dad for their kid. Even if it was just through letters, even if it was just one meeting a year, that somebody, they mattered to somebody. Mm-hmm.

and that they needed a reason to strive. And the program people who started Get on the Bus admitted that one of the reasons they did that was to help mend the families so that the

the dad's had somewhere to go back to and somewhere to know that they're still loved and wanted. Because if not, then they're just going to kind of lose themselves in prison, in violence, in drugs, in all kinds of negative stuff. Because I don't matter to anybody. So if I don't matter to anybody, what does it matter if I do well, if I get my GED, if I get a college degree, if I learn a number of skills?

if nobody wants me to be part of their life. So it was very fascinating to watch guys who hadn't had visits in a number of years and were going to meet their kids sometime for the first time. They'd just be sweating up a storm, nervous as heck, to just sit down at a table with their son or daughter and listen to what the son or daughter had to say. And 99% of them shocked that kid just wanted his dad.

one know who his dad was and that the kid mattered to his dad and that one day hopefully they would meet one another on the outside. That's been a really amazing thing to see. You know, I've been there for probably 17 of the 20 years that they had get on the bus and to see guys look forward to that and to just watch people

The kids wanting to see their dads, wanting to connect with their dads. And sometimes dads having to do some serious dad conversation at the table about staying in school, staying out of trouble. One dad went in there. He had almost a folder full of all these certificates he'd gotten in prison over 20-some years to talk to his daughter about she needed to stay in school. She was on the very verge of rapiness.

need to stay in school, do that so she wouldn't have to do what dad did. And that's come up with all these certificates, take all this extra stuff to get a GED, just stay with the program. And that was just huge for the dad to be able to say that to her, to be a positive influence in their life, even though for a long time they didn't get how important it was to have a dad. Because so many of them really did not have functioning fathers.

Yeah. I mean, it's just the stuff you deal with is like, yeah, it's incredibly emotional. It sounds like, and I'm sure it must have, I don't know, really affected you and like really recalibrated what you see as good and evil and bad. And, you know, like what, if you don't mind sharing it with you, but.

How the hell has this affected you personally, having these experiences? You know, we went, they had all the chaplains get together for the state at a big meeting in Sacramento about a year and a half ago. And they had a psychologist kind of talking to us. And he made this comment about that the average person has about two serious traumas in their life that they're dealing with overcoming. Okay. But

But the average inmate has at least four. So much harder. Yeah. And so if you come from a family that's not functioning real well, doesn't have a good support system, and you're going to have a lot of stuff on your plate, how in the world are they getting help?

Okay. You know, don't get stuck in kind of a downward spiral. And that's been, that's been interesting to watch because some of the guys come into the chapel and they want to engage and they're looking for something to help them, even though they've been away from church for a long time. They don't want anything to do with kind of garbage that's going on on the yard and

And they trust that God is there for them. And sometimes that's a really long process to just feel like I belong here. You're okay with me coming? Yes. And sometimes it takes them quite a while to even want to come sit down for confession or just talk about things because they have a grown up environment where people could talk about things.

Well, actually, that brings something to mind. We talked about phone calls earlier, and I don't know if they're still recorded, and people have to watch what they say, but in confession, is it truly private? You know, and I would think that they'd be, like, incredibly gun-shy of it after all the surveillance that they undergo constantly in the prison, you know? Oh, I get that question all the time. You know, is there any...

recording devices here? Is there any, you know, is anybody going to know about this? I go, no. The state is slowly starting to put cameras all over the prisons and eventually there will be cameras in the chapel. Throw it.

And they're talking about possibly even in the offices, they say they won't have any recording capabilities, you know, for sound. According to all this is just to make sure everybody's safe and nothing's going on. And if anybody's going to make an accusation, at least there is film of what took place or didn't take place in certain rooms. Yeah.

But that makes the guys very, very nervous. Now, Father, if I come talk to you, who's going to know about this? Well, apparently nobody. But slowly they're starting to roll out cameras in different prisons. And that's going to, shall we say, kind of change things and cause people to be more nervous about coming to talk to chaplains. That's not good at all.

It's not helpful. I'm pretty sure the bishops are going to try and fight that. And certainly the Jewish community and the different religious communities will speak up loudly that that is just going to interfere with people's trusting and people's ability to talk about their problems and receive the help they need. Yeah.

I mean, again, personally, like how has this affected you? Do you feel like more patient with people? Do you feel like this is just what I do? It's a part of me. Like, you know, how do you how do you reconcile doing this for so long? You know, what is it? What does it feel like now versus when you first started? Well, you know, it takes a good five plus years to just really understand the system and how it's supposed to work and kind of flow with it.

procedures and all this so it doesn't take up an extraordinary amount of time. I finally got to the point where I've earned the guys' trust so that guys will recommend men to come see me to sit down and talk because they know that there's issues in their family on the street, mom's sick, kids in the hospital, different things. And they really don't have counselors to talk to. For people with very serious mental problems, there are counselors for them.

But for the general population, not really. You know, so when they got things heavy on their heart, they often come into the chapel. You know, they talk to me for a few minutes. I've got some issues going on at home, and they're really eating at me. What about yourself? I mean, I would think, you know, you can't take the burden of all this all the time, so you probably need your own...

Sure, but I don't live alone. You know, I'm a Franciscan. I'm part of a community. So I come home. I do have a friend who is a therapist that I talk to once a month. He's a very devout Catholic who I talk to about the different, you know, issues that I deal with as priest, as pastor.

prison chaplain so that, you're right, you know, it doesn't overwhelm the system because, yeah, it's a very intense place to work. Most of the chaplains before me in my Franciscan community have been there for about 10 years. After about 10 years, they kind of thought it was enough. The

The first chaplain way back in the 60s was there about 16 years. So I'm the longest serving Catholic chaplain that that prison has ever had. And I guess you kind of find your niche. You know where it works for you and you try to be there to help people find faith, people who want that. And you kind of figure out other people just come in because they want something. And for most of them, I don't have anything that interests them. And that's okay.

That's okay. You know, you could sit quietly, but yeah, what you're probably looking for, you're not going to find here. I've asked people, imagine if you knew what God knows, you know, even just in one city, imagine if you knew all the good and all the bad that would happen, you know, in a given city. And every time I ask someone that they go, Oh God,

it'll be such an overwhelming burden. And it feels like you've gotten a taste of that. And I just wonder if it weighs heavy on your heart, like all the good and all the evil that you've seen, you know, I don't know, like, I know it's hard to speculate, but I wonder how, you know, God can bear to see all of that, you know, that,

I see. His love for people is so huge. Okay. And it's like a loving parent. How do you ever say enough to your kid? How do you ever quit reaching out? As much as they turn away, as much as they cause problems, you know, how does a parent ever quit caring, you know? Yeah.

We just don't talk publicly about this, but when we sit up front there at Mass and we look at the congregation and we look around, you see people that, you know, okay, this one's got cancer. Very few people know that. This one's struggling with their job. This one has ill parents that they're taking care of. And you just look around the room and you know, yeah, most of the church has no clue about all

all that's going on here and the faith that it takes some of these families just to show up, okay, Sunday after Sunday because of financial difficulties, difficulties with business, with mental health, with parents, with children. You just sit there and look at all this and, okay, in the midst of all this going on, God loves them and they...

Keep showing up and trusting in that love and wanting to respond to that love. I can't tell you when we clergy get together and just talk how powerful that is for us. We'll just sit there and look at them. And some of them carry very heavy burdens. The congregation would never know, would never know. It is not meant to know.

But it's amazing what they have. Continue to show up Sunday after Sunday. Continue to trust, believe, continue to hope.

I see little glimpses of that in the prison. I see guys looking for help to change. Because for a lot of them, they don't quite believe they can change. Because they haven't seen a lot of that. Every once in a while, an inmate will come in and say, well, you know, so-and-so just got off the bus from such and such a place. He goes, I don't know what happened to him, but he was a real tough guy not too many years ago. But now? Now he's just a very different person. Yeah, change can happen. Yeah.

And a lot of it, honestly, it happened through the chapels. God working and guys feeling this was a safe place to just be themselves. They could take off the masks. They could take off the being on high alert and get in chapel, even when nothing's going on, and just quiet and feel safe in the room.

For a time, there was kind of a prisoner code that you never messed in the chapels. You never caused problems in the chapels. You did not do bad stuff in the chapels. Slowly, that's kind of going away, but that was, in the old days, very strong, and they would correct the guys if somebody was in the chapel doing stuff they weren't doing. Don't be messing in God's house. Okay, we might not go there. We might not, you know, but...

we're not going to disrespect to be there. Yeah. Okay. I've seen, you know, over all these years, a very strong, shall we say streak of fighting between good and evil in people. Uh,

And often the guys don't know, you know, there's a way out of that. You don't need to keep running with evil. You can actually let go of that and go back to just being yourself. You know, the person you were before all this craziness started to happen. The funny thing for me is like the prison and the regular Catholic church are opposite in that

On Sunday, you can say from the pulpit, you know, God loves you. Everybody nods. Yes, yes, I believe that. You know, he's very kind, very merciful. Yes, yes, yes. You know the devil's after you. And the congregation will stop. We hear you, Father. We're not sure we believe that piece. Now, if you're in the prison and you say, you know the devil's after you, they'll all nod and say, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

I've run into that guy a few times. Yep, he's done really bad. They have no doubt about that. But then if you go the next step, you know God really loves you. That's a big struggle for them to believe. Part of it is that God is projected most of the time very male, and many of them have not had good male role models. Is there any kind of trauma that seems to be the hardest for people to overcome and come to faith? Are there any kinds that block people from coming to faith?

You know, that whole thing about trust. If trust was crushed as a child, you know, because mom left them, because dad left them, because they went through foster care. The guys who go through foster care and grew up through foster care, those are some tough, tough cookies. Even other inmates will tell me, yeah, those are the ones that I'm most nervous about are the guys that grew up through foster care. Because they were caring about other people so deeply. Yeah.

Yeah, they can be incredibly violent. Well, very good, Father. So how can people find out more about prison ministry and about the work that you do? How can they follow up on this conversation? Lord, it's not exactly like I need a lot of calls or emails to follow up on.

They certainly can talk to their diocese where there are. There are prisons all over the country. California has very large prison population. At one point, we were, I think, almost 200,000 guys incarcerated in state prisons. Wow.

I think we're currently now a little bit over 100,000 in state prisons. We have about 30 state prisons, not including county jails, city jails, federal prisons.

You know, that most dioceses has some kind of outreach for city jails, for county jails, for prisons to try and get people to go in, do Bible studies, do catechism, help whosoever the chaplain there, run programs, because the chapel can't be open unless the chaplain's there or a volunteer is there.

And so in California, the California Catholic Conference of Bishops has a restorative justice wing at...

they try and support that work. The bishops of California have been very involved with trying to get the prisons to do the best they can for the guy and to be very supportive of that. And I fought some very strong fights to get more things in the prison and have guys not in solitary confinement for years on end. And the bishops were very helpful in that. Okay. Well, very good. Well,

Well, Father, thank you so much for coming on this podcast and being so honest and open about everything. I really appreciate being here. You have a good day, my friend. If you like this podcast, please click the link in the description to subscribe and review us on iTunes. You've been listening to the Finding Genius Podcast with Richard Jacobs.

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