Bishop Martin Hayes “The Church should be a bridge between marginalised people and the community”, Bishop of Kilmore Martin Hayes, who is also the Bishops’ Conference Liaison Bishop to the Irish Prison Service has said. Some of these marginalised people “often forgotten” by society are prisoners.
“Of course, we have to acknowledge the fact that they would have committed serious crimes and have caused hurt to people,” the bishop said. But when they are in isolation, paying for their crimes, “key personnel” like the prison staff and the prison chaplains, get involved to work as a link.
The prison chaplains “represent us, they represent the wider community, and they represent our desire to reach out to the prisoners. When prisoners are reached out to, under the cause of mission, it can help them to identify their own spirituality and find a source within themselves to sustain them in their isolation.”
Conversely, Bishop Hayes also believes the Church should be a voice for the prisoners, a representative of the marginalised to the community. When visiting prisons, the bishop takes “the opportunity to meet with the staff, with the chaplains, and when I can and when it’s appropriate, to meet and sit with prisoners to chat with them and listen”.
A busy routine usually prevents the community from ‘seeing’ marginalised people, and these people often get forgotten, “but it’s our obligation as the Church, we have the opportunities to highlight those causes,” the bishop said. As a community, “we need to be urging our politicians and services to do better… So people can rehabilitate without being overly preoccupied with the conditions that they’re living in.”