The Vatican flag has been flying since Thursday at Brians 1, the penitentiary center in Sant Esteve Sesrovires that will receive Leo XIV on Wednesday, making him the first Pope to visit a Spanish prison. A brigade of bricklayers is working tirelessly to spruce up the auditorium that will host the Pontiff’s meeting with eighty inmates and twenty prison officials. The walls are immaculately white and smell of fresh paint.
White is precisely the only color that neither Josefina nor Montserrat will be able to wear that day. They are the two inmates from the women’s module of Brians 1 who will address the Pope. They are as excited as they are nervous and very proud to have been chosen. “What I will tell him is a secret, but I already have it written down,” Montserrat explains with a smile.
Montserrat and Josefina are as nervous as they are excited, they are the chosen ones to speak to the Pope on Wednesday
Both women were selected by Jesús Roy, the penitentiary priest in charge of Saturday’s Eucharists. Josefina is the module’s hairdresser, Catholic and practicing since she can remember. Faith came to Montserrat later, and it did so through the prison priest. “He believed in me, and since then I have believed in God, who helps me to be here and to be a better person.” Neither knows why they were selected, but they are convinced that they will do well and that they will be able to convey to the Pontiff what faith, God, and his desire to visit a prison mean to them, visualizing the Pope’s commitment to those most in need of hope.
With their speeches ready and timed to the second because the visit will be fleeting, barely 20 minutes, and nothing can go off script, the only thing left for these two women is to decide what to wear for the meeting with Jesus’ envoy on Earth. Montserrat confesses that it’s not easy and that she will end up resorting to an official who has offered to help her. “They have already told us no white, no necklines, no overly wide garments, and nothing too informal.”
The two women, along with Elisabet and Mayte, participated yesterday in a meeting that the Minister of Justice, Ramon Espadaler, presided over at Brians 1 with the prison director, Jordi Pons, and the center’s chaplain, Jesús Bel, to share some details of the visit.
The eighty male and female prisoners who will attend the religious meeting have been selected exclusively for their faith; they are those who attend mass every weekend, after having previously requested it through an application that already passed all security filters. The crimes they are accused of or for which they are already serving sentences will not condition their presence at the meeting with the Pope. “Here we never ask about the crime. My role is not to judge,” assures Bel.
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Minister Espadaler also does not hide his emotion and assures that the stop at Brians 1 is part of the Prevost’s philosophy of approaching “the margins” and taking into account those whom others forget. The minister, a practicing Catholic, participated last year in the Generalitat delegation that held a private audience with the Pope, to whom they presented a stole designed and embroidered by a group of inmates from Wad-Ras. They will also participate in the meeting on Wednesday.
The director of Brians 1 assures that the visit will not disrupt the daily routine of the prison, beyond the inevitable and what has to do with security matters. For the first time, he has had to sign a circular authorizing the entry of firearms into the penitentiary compound, something completely prohibited, except for exceptions like Wednesday due to the condition of .
The 1,100 male inmates and 125 female inmates, figures that fluctuate as it is a pre-trial detention center, will maintain their activities, as will the 400 prison officials who will have reinforcements.
The Pope will receive from the inmates a ceramic plate with a design inspired by the dove as a symbol of freedom, which will come in a box also made by the inmates who have inscribed the verse “I was in prison, and you came to me.”
