This is the cover of
“How a Powerful
Lawyer-Turned-Priest
Is Changing the Lives
of Men Behind Bars” by
Maura Poston Zagrans.
The book’s subject,
Father David Link of the
Diocese of Gary, Ind.,
spoke about his prison
ministry during the
annual Catholic Social
Ministries Gathering,
held in Washington Feb. 2-5. Father Link sees one-
on-one relationships as a key to helping prisoners
build healthy new lives.
CNS
Prison chaplain sees focus on the personal as
needed in healing
By Patricia Zapor
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A couple of pieces of leg-
islation in Congress being backed by Catholic organiza-
tions aim for institutional fixes to criminal justice. But
a prison chaplain in Indiana also advocates a more per-
sonal approach to what’s known as restorative justice.
At 77 years old, Father David Link has recently
made a second (or maybe fifth) career in ministry at six
Indiana state prisons. Apriest for five years who entered
the seminary after his wife of 45 years died, Father Link
was in Washington in early February to talk about his
current vocation and avocation.
He spoke at the annual Catholic Social Ministry
Gathering, telling of his experiences in prison minis-
try and promoting his Crime Peace Plan, intended to
correct flaws the longtime lawyer sees in the criminal
justice system.
As part of the social ministry conference, partici-
pants went to Capitol Hill to visit congressional staffers
and advocate for a handful of issues.
Among those, participants were asking for support
for two bills: the
Second Chance Reauthorization Act
and the
Smarter Sentencing Act
. The former would fund
state and federal programs that help people who leave
prison reintegrate into their communities. The latter
would reform mandatory minimum sentencing guide-
lines to give more options for judges in drug-related
cases that don’t involve violence.
At a background briefing on the bills, Father Link
put the legislation in the context of what he has learned
since his wife dared him, 16 years ago, to give a lecture
at a maximum security prison, insisting he’d find it re-
warding. His private law practice -- mostly internation-
al law, some sports franchises -- had never involved de-
fending people accused of the kind of crimes that might
have sent them to state prison, he explained. And state
prison inmates weren’t the type of people he thought he
would connect with.
“I went to prove her wrong,” he told
Catholic News
Service
in a Feb. 3 interview. Instead, in “a room with
65 murderers” he “fell in love with these guys.”
In the
CNS
interview and at the social ministry gath-
ering briefing, Father Link told the stories of prisoners
and former prisoners he has come to think of as fam-
ily. There’s the woman who’s been out of prison for 20
years and still can’t get a job; the man who wound up in
prison after trying to get out of a gang and now spends
his time warning kids against the path he took; the
tough-guy inmate who asked for a hug after the priest
told him of a death in his family.
And he talked up his
Crime Peace Plan
, a 12-step
proposal -- 12 steps at the moment, it keeps growing
-- to “achieve true justice for victims and victim’s fami-
lies, for those who are accused and convicted and for
society at large.”
A 2013 book about Father Link,
“Camerado, I Give
You My Hand,”
by Maura Poston Zagrans, concludes
with what were then 10 points of his plan, with a de-
tailed explanation of each. He talks about the misguided
efforts of a “war on crime” that has “no exit strategy.”
His plan, he wrote, “is not about how to be more
lenient or more sympathetic to criminals, nor is it only
about saving money.” It is, he says, “a populist project,”
which hinges on treating the vast majority of prisoners
as people in need of healing, and shifting the focus of
the criminal justice system from punishment to healing,
from adversarial to collaborative.
The holder of four doctorates -- two in law, and one
each in science and letters -- David Link’s career path
took many turns: private law practice; longtime dean of
the University of Notre Dame’s Law School; founding
president of Notre Dame’s campus in Perth, Australia;
founding dean of the law school at the University of St.
Thomas in Minneapolis-St. Paul; and the deputy vice
chancellor and provost of the University of St. Augus-
tine in South Africa.
As a volunteer, he co-founded the Center for the
Homeless in South Bend, Ind., and served as chairman
of the Council of Providers of Services to the Homeless.
He also worked on Indiana electoral reform and other
projects promoting ethics in law practice and govern-
ment.
After Barbara Link died in 2003, Bishop Dale J.
Melczek of Gary, Ind., prodded the widower to consider
the priesthood as the most effective way of living out
what had become his driving passion, prison ministry.
Considering his extensive education and lifetime of
experiences, he said Bishop Melczek “whittled down
the curriculum” for the seminary so that with two-and-
a-half years of study, Father Link was ordained a priest
in 2008.
Now one of his goals is to persuade more individual
Catholics, as well as parishes and dioceses, to take up
the challenges of his
Crime Peace Plan
, and “truly talk
about rehabilitation” as Pope Francis has suggested.
While he recognizes that there are some genuine
psychopaths among them, “most people in prison are
not bad people,” he said. “They’re maybe sick people,
and we ought to find out how to heal them.”
One step toward healing is one-on-one relationships
between prisoners and caring people, Father Link said.
He related how a seminary program at Louisiana’s An-
gola penitentiary has created a cadre of prisoners trained
to help other inmates seek spiritual comfort. Once one
of the nation’s most violent prisons, the seminary pro-
gram is credited with helping change the character of
Angola.
The New York Times
reported in October in a story
on the program that assaults on staff and inmates in An-
gola dropped from 280 and 1,107, respectively, in 1990
to 55 and 316 in 2012. The prison seminary program
was launched in 1995.
Father Link thinks the seminary experience is a
small ray of encouragement in an otherwise bleak crim-
inal justice system. But it is a valuable example, he said
of how he believes his work as a chaplain is most suc-
cessful.
“Sure, I preach at Masses in prisons,” he said. “But
what turns people around is the one-on-one relation-
ships. That’s how the Holy Spirit works.”
22
Gulf Pine Catholic
•
February 28, 2014
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