Powder-blue gates buzz open and shut. Cinder block rooms are painted white. The smell is reminiscent of an indoor pool. It would be nice to say that Mass in the St. Joseph County Jail feels like any other – after all, Mass is Mass the world over – but the experience here feels quite distincti ve. There is no singing, almost no movement at all during the liturgy. The Mass kit brought by the priest, often subject to be searched, is barebones – wine and water in unassuming plastic bottles, no crucifix. The liturgy takes place in a classroom, in front of a blackboard where left-behind quotes like “Sorry shared is sorrow divided” were erased minutes before to write the page numbers for the Scripture readings in yellow chalk. Mass attendees sit on or stand in front of small black plastic chairs with lap desks. It is also unusual during a standard parish Mass for several of the attendees to weep. As Holy Cross Father Louis Manzo said, Mass everywhere always begins with asking for forgiveness, and there is no “faking it” in jail. “They all know they’re sinners,” Father Manzo said. Father Manzo and Holy Cross Father James Bracke, along with a few other priests with the Congregation of Holy Cross, offer regular Sunday Mass at the St. Joseph County Jail. The jail holds about 800 people, the vast majority of whom are men. (The few women inmates are kept separated from the men and thus never have attended the Mass.) Mass has been celebrated at the jail since the 1980s. Another more recent ministry, run by lay volunteers John Bolstetter and Kathryn Olson, is a Bible study held at various incarceration locations in the South Bend area. On Sunday, February 8, it was Father Bracke’s turn to celebrate Mass. Accompanying him were frequent jail Mass visitors Jeff and Marguerite Blue. Jeff has been attending Mass at the jail since 2011, and his wife for almost that long. As the couple said, the inmates enjoy the presence of others during the liturgy. “It feels more like Mass,” the Blues said. The jail lobby’s large Christmas tree was still up in the second week of February, with wrapped decorative boxes underneath, though what really tickled Father Bracke and the Blues were the “Be Mine” paper hearts for Valentine’s Day taped across the lobby window, right next to the drug overdose antidote vending machines. “You’ve got to have a sense of humor here,” they said. The inmates filed into the classroom one by one to sign in for Mass, each dressed in dark green uniforms, about 20 attendees in all. In the minutes before Mass begins, Father Bracke usually hears confessions. Those happen at the front of the room, the buzz of conversation among the other seated attendees providing some privacy for the sacrament happening mere feet away. Building Trust Behind Bars Bolstetter runs a weekly Bible study for prisoners at the St. Joseph County Jail and a couple other locations, in concert with St. Pius X Catholic Church in Granger. He said one of the most important aspects of working in prison ministry is building trust through relationship, “because most of these guys don’t trust anything,” Bolstetter said. “They don’t trust anybody. They don’t trust any outsiders, because they’ve been hurt and burned so many times in their lives. That’s a generalization, but many of them fall in that category. So, it’s going to take a minute for them to accept you, for them to respect you.” This trust is built through consistency and reliability. “If we tell one of the guys that we will get an answer to a question that he has or that we will research a specific Catholic topic for them, we better do it, or else the trust we have been working on developing is destroyed,” Bolstetter added. The volunteers at the jail never ask inmates about their crimes. But sometimes when that trust is established, the inmates tell them freely, or they might ask the priests to attend their court hearings. Roughly 95 percent of the time, Bolstetter said, the reasons they’re in jail are drug related. Overdoses and drug use continue to be a common problem inside jails and provide one reason for heightened security for visitors. Anything brought in or out without permission is considered contraband. Even providing spiritual or instructional books to the inmates poses a difficulty, as a recent development in drug circulation is soaking book pages in drugs and letting them dry before smuggling the drug-laced books into the jail. Recently, the volunteers have gotten permission to distribute Mass booklets and spiritual reading for inmates to keep during the week. Bolstetter, who usually leads the Bible study with at least one other volunteer, can have anywhere from 7 to 10 participants a week at the jail, and a few more at the South Bend Community Reentry Center. During a typical meeting, participants read the Mass readings for the following Sunday and discuss them together. If there’s time left after their discussions, Bolstetter talks about the saint of the day or turns to the Letter of James. “Every single sentence in James has a lot of applicability for everybody in the day-to-day world,” he said. Bolstetter refers to his involvement in jail ministry as a calling, which he first became aware of more than 10 years ago. During a night of difficulty falling asleep in 2014, he turned on the television and the “Scared Straight” show about prison happened to be on. It was then that Bolstetter said he “heard a distinct call from God” to work in the prison system. “And it scared the living crap out of me – it just scared me to death,” Bolstetter said. At 3 a.m. that same night, he opened his computer to try to find a prison ministry in the diocese, without any luck. The next day, Bolstetter sought the advice of Monsignor Bill Schooler, who was then the pastor at St. Pius X. When Bolstetter began visiting jails, he accompanied Deacon Greg Gehred, who coordinated jail ministry in St. Joseph County, and mostly observed. “I don’t think I said a word for 30 days,” Bolstetter said. Olson leads St. Pius X’s Bible study for women inmates, which takes place twice a month at South Bend’s DuComb Center, a residential correctional facility with a work release program. With a background as a caregiver, Olson said prison ministry had always appealed to her. However, when she began the women’s branch of the parish’s Bible study, she, like Bolstetter, found she had to build her experience from the ground up. There isn’t much available in terms of volunteer training for this ministry, she explained. Olson found an online orientation to prison ministry led by two priests, and she continues to swap resources and stories with Bolstetter. Bolstetter emphasized that he and the other volunteers are to be messengers of God’s hope and encouragement to the inmates, without being pushy or forcing teachings on them. “We are God-focused and others-focused, and we attempt to meet the truest needs of the people in front of us,” Bolstetter said. He added, “Every chance we get we tell them that a person’s past doesn’t have to dictate their future – God’s mercy is boundless.” That being said, the prison visits aren’t just for the inmates. “I am often very humbled by the depth of understanding that we encounter from the inmates,” Bolstetter said. He added that his “knowledge of the faith has grown exponentially” due to the time he spends with the Sunday readings preparing for Bible study every week. Olson added that after a particularly moving meeting, she often spends a few minutes “processing” in her car in the parking lot. “It’s clear the Holy Spirit was there while we were together, just because of the peace and calm,” Olson said.   Faith in a Restricted Environment Because the DuComb Center has work release and similar programs, Olson has permission to take some of the inmates to a parish Mass once a month. But in the St. Joseph County Jail, where inmates can’t leave, Sunday Mass happens during the afternoon hour when the rest of the jail is on lockdown. Currently, the priests’ and Bolstetter’s communications jail run through the jail’s Protestant chaplain, former law enforcement officer Steven Coyle. Every week, Coyle makes up a list of inmates who have permission to attend Mass. He vets the list carefully, the priests said, making sure there are no problems or conflicts such as opposing gang memberships among attendees. Unfortunately, if Coyle is sick or busy, he can’t make the list, and there can be no Mass that week. The volunteers have been trying to establish more personal contact with the warden and other administrators at the jail. Considering logistics needed to hold Mass, the priests and visitors for Mass make a point to express gratitude to the guards and other employees. “We’ve got to remember the guards are not dealing with the nicest people in the world,” Father Manzo said. “We express our gratitude to the jail authorities, because without their cooperation, we could not carry this out.” Another complication is that, like most correctional facilities in Indiana, the St. Joseph County Jail is understaffed and filled to capacity. This problem has only intensified over the past three years, the volunteers said. The jail, for instance, is intended for short-term stays, but today many inmates end up serving their years-long sentences in the jail itself. The lack of accommodations as compared to traditional longer-stay prisons only intensifies the need for the sacraments and programming the volunteers bring. The COVID-19 pandemic was another factor that dealt a blow to their ministries – and to prison environments at large. Mass and other events weren’t allowed to take place for several months, and when they restarted, the first St. Joseph County Jail Mass had an attendance of two inmates. Bolstetter’s first Bible study had only one. While the Masses, Bible studies, and other programs have largely rebuilt themselves over the past several years, there are still restrictions left over from the pandemic. For example, the St. Joseph County Jail doesn’t offer in-person family visitation anymore; inmates can only make video calls to see their friends and loved ones.   Isolation, Reentry, and the Need for Ministry When Father Bracke asked for intentions from the inmates during Mass, their answers reflected the sense of isolation. One of the men wanted to pray for the inmates’ families on the outside – and to pray, as he said, that the inmates could return to stay with their families, where they truly belong. “We don’t belong here,” the inmate said. Another inmate offered up a prayer “to break generational curses for ourselves and our children.” The room also prayed for two of the attendees who were being released that week. (As Father Manzo joked, “We love to lose parishioners at the jail.”) All the volunteers agreed they had never felt unsafe when volunteering at incarceration facilities. “Why do we do it? Well, first of all, they’re still members of the Church,” Father Manzo said. “We don’t write people off because they have misbehaved. … We don’t write them off; we don’t forget them. We’re not a Church just of saints. And that doesn’t justify any of their misbehavior.” Bolstetter quoted Matthew 25, where Christ in the Last Judgement brings His people to eternal life, saying, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” “It’s a command, not a suggestion,” Bolstetter said of Christ’s words about visiting those in prison. As Olson said, prisoners have different priorities, and life there moves at a different pace than the rest of us realize. “It’s moment to moment, day to day,” Olson said about inmates’ experience. Father Manzo added that many inmates have been in and out of jails in the prison system. He said he has heard them “rank jails like we rank hotels.” “Even those of us who go, we know very little about what life is like in that jail,” Father Manzo said. Which, of course, can make reentry into society difficult. Olson told one story from her time at Dismas House, a local halfway house. During a dinner there, Olson sat across the table from a man named Mike, who she learned in conversation had just been released from 20 years in prison. He pulled his new cellphone out from his pocket, put it on the table, and told her, “I have no idea how to use this.” “Think about that,” Olson said, “you’re not exposed to the changes in the culture for 20 years … and then you’ve got to live in that space. It kind of silenced me.” Father Bracke’s homily on the Sunday in February touched on the realities of prison life. He told the story of his first visit to the nearby Westville Correctional Facility, how his fears dissipated when a “brother in the jail” gave him a smile and a greeting. As Father Bracke told the inmates, each of them is called to be a light, was knit in his mother’s womb by the love of God. It couldn’t be easy in this environment, he said, but he encouraged them to turn to Jesus. Father Bracke pointed out that Jesus knows what it’s like to be in prison, to be confined. He knows. As Father Bracke and the other visitors left Mass at the sound of the bell and turned the corner to leave, the last thing they saw of the inmates was the guards turning them against the wall, arms up, to be searched before heading back to their cells. And the powder-blue gate closed behind them. For more information about attending or offering Sunday afternoon Mass at the jail, email Father James Bracke at [email protected]. For more information about volunteering to help with the St. Pius X Bible study, email John Bolstetter at [email protected] for the men’s group or Kathy Olson at [email protected] for the women’s. 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