Fr Stephen McBrearty Personal Profile
Jason Osborne
Fr Stephen McBrearty is a man intimately familiar with God’s mercy. He spends his days communicating just that as lead Catholic Chaplain to the Northern Ireland Prison Service, a role which would see him become a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE). Ordained in 1981, and currently Parish Priest of St Colmcille’s Holywood, his baptism into the prison world was not necessarily greeted with joy: “I was appointed to take on the prisons as prison chaplain to Hydebank, a young offenders’ centre,” he tells The Irish Catholic. “I just shook at it and thought, “What am I doing this for?”
However, the pull of the gospel and the opportunity at hand quickly won him over: “I took it on, and it proved to be a wonderful appointment. The prison chaplain role at that stage was all very minor. We were seen as just the nice people who came in and talked about God, but, my whole journey in it was to professionalise that role, of the chaplains, to have them recognised and work tirelessly, with the support of others, to have governors and the director generals recognise that chaplaincy is not just nice people coming in and smiling, but that they are very effective in their duty of care.”
The scope of his work became apparent after some time there, the duty of care not being limited to the prisoners: “I saw it as the prison parish family, not just as the prison. Everybody here. Prison officers were coming under terrible pressure because of the circumstances in Northern Ireland, as you can imagine. Anybody working in that whole area – we had as much duty of care to them as we did to the residents. The residents demanded the respect that we could give to them, as people who represented ethical, moral, and pastoral roles.”
Chance
The Catholic Church has always associated prison work with a chance to perform works of mercy, and as such it is deeply involved in prison life in Northern Ireland.
“We’re now the lead co-ordinating chaplain for all Catholic chaplains in the North of Ireland here. There are three prisons: Maghaberry, Magilligan, and Hydebank. I co-ordinate that for our bishop, Bishop Noel, who has two prisons residing in his diocese, that’s Hydebank, a young offenders’ and women’s prison, and also Maghaberry, which holds the majority of all those charged in criminality. Then the third is up in Derry, where Bishop Donal, who is a great friend of my own and who was of course here with us in Down & Connor as one of our priests, he has the third prison there,” Fr McBrearty says.
Far from being a mere task or duty of the Church, Fr McBrearty’s work in the prisons strikes close to home: “I grew up with these kids and their families in west Belfast and I knew that I’d know an awful lot of them. Their fathers had probably been at school with me and we didn’t get on tremendously well then,” he laughs. Still chuckling, he continues, “So you know, again, how was I going to get on tremendously well with their kids then?”
Asked about whether or not working in prisons has afforded him a deeper experience of the faith, Fr McBrearty had this to say: “There was a turning point in that ministry that I was in. They were rough, and they were tough, and they’d take you on if they saw any weakness in you – these were the young offenders, so you had to be tough back, and that was the breaking point for me. I learned to be tough very, very quickly, and I let fly at them because they were just messing about at Mass, and that was it. I became the voice. They grew to trust me, and that was a very deep awakening moment for me – to be trusted. In the same way that, at that stage, I was trusting God to guide me through all of this, and that was a very deep moment of awakening and faith.”
Glimpse
Prison ministry struck Fr McBrearty deeply, and offered him a glimpse into the truth expressed by St Philip Neri, who said as he watched men walk to their execution, “There go I, but for the grace of God.” He reflects: “Prison ministry keeps you grounded, because all that great stuff we’ve heard from our parents and grandparents in the past, about how you don’t know what trouble can come to your door. I mean, that’s the one thing that I so remember; my parents saying to me way back in the 70s during The Troubles, nobody knows what trouble can come to the door.
“Wee things like that really come through because I was meeting people who were being demonised in society and yet, their actions were not the total of them. There was much more, as there is to every person who’s incarcerated, there’s much, much more than the headline. There’s a whole person in this, that circumstance and situation led to their criminality, and it’s seeing that and understanding that. Then you very quickly realise that Jesus was able to forgive the criminal on the cross beside him.”
He describes a constant battle between the tendency to merely punish and seek retribution, and the knowledge that rehabilitation is ultimately what restores people’s lives to them: “One of my biggest battles in my earliest years was fighting against the retributionists. The retributionist officers and staff members who were there to make prisoners suffer.” Ministry to the prisoners is a battle far from over, and Fr McBrearty acknowledges that he’s helped as much by it as those he ministers to:
“So, it’s a big challenge, but it’s the most magnificently, wonderful ministry, and it’s probably saved me.”