SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: Los Angeles County’s Twin Towers Correctional Facility: it’s one of the largest jails in the country. Behind its walls, over 3,000 men are locked up as their criminal prosecutions continue. Many prisoners are accused of committing murder, rape, and a variety of gang-related crimes. However, this jailhouse is also a house of worship to Dennis Gibbs, a senior chaplain at Twin Towers. His Sunday services are like few others, held in a cell block and closely watched by sheriff’s deputies.

CHAPLAIN DENNIS GIBBS: I think this is a holy place. I believe that we are standing on holy ground. This is a place of reconciliation and healing, and so I really see this as—in many ways this is my parish.

GONZALEZ: Chaplin Gibbs is one of dozens of clergy men and women from a variety of faiths who offer pastoral care and spiritual guidance to the inmates at Twin Towers. Although an Episcopalian, Chaplain Gibbs provides spiritual counseling to all prisoners who approach him, no matter what their particular faith.

GIBBS (speaking to prisoner): Hey, man, how is it going? Good to see you again.

PRISONER: Could you say a little prayer for me and my girl, my baby?

GONZALEZ: Although the chaplain doesn’t condone what these men are accused of doing, he also doesn’t apologize for showing them compassion.

GIBBS (praying with prisoner): God the Holy Spirit be upon you and remain with you forever.

GIBBS: These men are wounded, these men are orphans, and these men are largely forgotten, and I think it’s powerful that we bring church to them and remind them that they are a part of our community, and that they are beloved by God.

CARLOS ORTIZ: You build a bond, I’d say, with the chaplain. You build a bond of friendship.

GONZALEZ: Carlos Ortiz, who’s been at Twin Towers for six months, was recently convicted of drug possession. He says Chaplin Gibbs and other jailhouse clergy help inmates sustain and develop their faith when they need it the most.

ORTIZ: If you don’t have faith, they provide faith. You know, I am a man of faith, so just the fact there is someone that you can talk to, someone that can acknowledge about God, that’s something good for inmates. The situation you are at might not be good, but he makes you realize that you are good spiritually and physically, you are in a good spot.

GONZALEZ: Along with larger worship services, the chaplains spend much of their time holding private one-on-one sessions with prisoners who want to talk to them. Episcopal chaplain Greta Ronnigen says she’s not interested in why the men she ministers to are here.

GONZALEZ: You don’t care what the guys are in here for?

CHAPLAIN GRETA RONNIGEN: No.

GONZALEZ: Why? That seems counter-intuitive.

RONNIGEN: Because I am here for their spiritual support. I am not a lawyer. I am not social services. I’m about where they are with God. I am here to talk to them as they turn, turn away from the dark that has been their past, and they are looking, they are seeking.

GONZALEZ: Some of the prisoners at the center of complex cases, such as murder or gang-related crimes, can be held at Twin Towers for years before they’re convicted and sentenced to state prison. Except in extraordinary circumstances, say when an inmate might be threatening to murder someone, the jailhouse clergy keep confidential what they hear from prisoners, as Chaplain Gibbs explained in a conversation back at the Los Angeles Episcopal diocese.

GONZALEZ: If an inmate says something in a confession and admits to something horrible you don’t have to report it, right?

GIBBS: It’s protected.

GONZALEZ: It’s protected.

GIBBS: Yeah, it’s protected. The nature of confession is that it is a sealed sacrament, and that’s important for the men. Once the priest puts on that stole and enters into the sacrament of the church, it is a completely sealed and confidential conversation, just like it would be with somebody confessing in their church.

GONZALEZ: The presence of the chaplains at county lockups also helps ease tensions and assuage anger, and the sheriff’s deputies welcome that. However, at Twin Towers security and punishment always come before worship, and that’s especially true in the jail’s highest security units or pods.

GIBBS: In this particular unit they are complicated cases. I would say a very good majority of the men are in here for homicide, and there’s a lot of gang-related crimes in this pod.

GONZALEZ: Here, services are often conducted through steel doors and plexiglass, and services, as in the day we were shooting, are often cut short by lockdowns.

GIBBS (speaking to Chaplain Ronnigen): Greta, full lockdown. We gotta go.

RONNIGEN: Sorry, guys. Peace.

GIBBS: Yeah, the jail just went on full lockdown, so we never really know what that is about, just that a full lockdown means that there is no movement whatsoever, so we want to wrap up rather quickly. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get out of the jail.

GONZALEZ: Although he doesn’t get into the details, Chaplain Gibbs knew about confinement long before he arrived at Twin Towers six years ago.

(speaking to Chaplain Gibbs): You were in jail yourself?

GIBBS: I was, yeah. I have lived this despairing life to a great degree, absolutely. My personal response to the call to follow Christ has led me back to the streets where I once was homeless. It’s led me back to the drug-addicted and alcoholic, as I once suffered. It’s led me back to the jails, where I once was a prisoner.

GONZALEZ: I’m sure, Chaplain, when the men at Twin Towers hear about your past, and I’m sure you share some of your past with them, it gives you a particular credibility.

GIBBS: I think it does. I think it changes the conversation to a degree and kind of alerts people that I am not just some do-gooder Christian guy coming in to tell you that Jesus loves you.

GONZALEZ: That’s certainly the case for prisoner David Yi.

DAVID YI: He does give us hope. That he was once an inmate also and now this is where he’s at, helping other people find themselves—it’s just a lot of hope.

GONZALEZ: He’s a good model to follow?

YI: Exactly. Someone you can lean on.

GONZALEZ: One of the Twin Towers prisoners Chaplain Gibbs has gotten to know the best in recent months is also the most unusual. He’s William Manson, a scholarly 80-year-old physician recently convicted of killing his ex-wife. Already in the hospital ward, Manson knows he’ll likely die behind prison walls.

WILLIAM MANSON: I think that the sentence was just under the circumstances. I did the crime. Now I’m paying the price.

GONZALEZ: And spiritually are you armed for this, for this life that you have ahead of you, being a man of faith?

MANSON: I don’t know. I think so.

GIBBS (speaking to William Manson): God bless you.

MANSON: Thank you very much.

GIBBS: Would you like to pray?

MANSON: Yes.

GIBBS: As chaplains we absorb people’s sadness, their brokenness, their wounding, their depth of spiritual despair, and we are very aware of that as chaplains. I think in many ways we hold for these inmates often what they cannot hold for themselves.

(anointing and blessing prisoners): May your wounds be healed.

GONZALEZ: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.

After the vote, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly managing editor Kim Lawton asked Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop Jon Bruno how he would explain the vote to Anglicans around the world who oppose gay bishops, and what message he hoped it would send to gays and lesbians.

DEBORAH POTTER, guest anchor: In Los Angeles, a group of inner-city clergy, many of them inspired by veterans of the civil rights movement, are taking their ministries out of the pulpit and into the streets. Instead of only preaching to save souls, they are returning to activism: confronting homelessness, unemployment, and violence. Lucky Severson reports.

Speaker at Bryant Temple AME Church service: It’s time to break the silence. It’s time to draw a line saying “this far and no farther.”

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: This is the Bryant Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Central Los Angeles. The music will move you, but this is not a celebration. It’s a service dedicated to bringing an end to the needless deaths of all the boys who will never become men.

REV. EUGENE WILLIAMS (CEO and National Director, Regional Congregations and Neighborhood Organizations Training Center, speaking at service): Our young people have been dying in the streets day and night where we have hidden our light under a bushel.

SEVERSON: How many kids have been killed, say, in the last year?

REV. WILLIAMS: About a hundred.

SEVERSON: Pastor Eugene Williams managed to survive his inner-city childhood, but the odds are worse today. He says it’s partly because too many African-American churches have lost their way.

REV. WILLIAMS: And so we’ve gone from a period of ministers like Dr Cecil Murray and Dr. J. Alfred Smith, who taught that it was important to love your neighbor as yourself, to a place where ministers believed that it was important that the community love them.

SEVERSON: So that’s why Williams and other activist preachers started a program called Passing the Mantle, now in its fourth year at the University of Southern California.  It’s a nine-day course where pastors, now known as the Old Lions, teach younger pastors, African American and Latino, how to get civically engaged in the real-life drama of inner city Los Angeles.

(to Rev. Cecil Murray): Did you ever think that you would be called an Old Lion?

REV. CECIL “CHIP” MURRAY (Professor of Christian Ethics, USC School of Religion and Former Pastor, First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Los Angeles, Calif.): Bless the Lord, I knew I’d be called old, but not a lion.

SEVERSON: Cecil “Chip” Murray retired at 75 as the pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, which was the largest AME church in the country. He could preach hellfire and brimstone, but he was more concerned about social issues like homelessness, jobs, violence, and hunger.

REV. MURRAY: We must not only have life after death, but we must have life after birth, even as with the founder of Christianity. He would preach personal salvation, but he would also preach social salvation. He would reach out.  I have come that you may have life, not I have come to take you to heaven.

SEVERSON: Pastor Mark Whitlock is a co-director of Passing the Mantle. He says because of Rev. Murray he turned his life around, so he knows a pastor can make a difference, even with kids society deems beyond hope.

REV. MARK WHITLOCK (Director of Community Initiatives, USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture and Pastor, Christ Our Redeemer AME Church, Irvine, Calif.): I would probably be one of those people you would be afraid of in the community, yeah, sold some product that were illegal and did some things that I’m not very proud of.

SEVERSON: Now, as pastor of Christ Our Redeemer AME Church, he sees how much more difficult it is today for inner-city kids to break free of their environment. He was once one of those kids. The need for black churches to get involved, he says, is urgent.

REV. WHITLOCK: It’s immediate, and you look at the challenge of gang violence, the number of African Americans, Latinos that are locked up in this country, over a million, the absence of African Americans graduating, particularly African American men graduating from high schools and even elementary schools, the attention is necessary now, and it’s an immediate need to change.

REV. MURRAY: To say we are here to save souls and that’s all—you can’t save souls in isolation. It’s a totality of heart, soul, mind, strength, family, environment. It is essentially your environment.

SEVERSON: Pastor Murray earned his reputation as an Old Lion as a leader of the civil rights movement in California from the very beginning. Despite his quiet, humble demeanor, he has won many battles and concessions from the city and state, including one that the police would no longer hold suspects in choke-holds.

Pastor J. Alfred Smith is another Old Lion who led the civil rights movement in northern California. He is senior pastor emeritus of the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland.

REV. J. ALFRED SMITH (Pastor Emeritus, Allen Temple Baptist Church, Oakland, Calif.): The church was the civil rights movement because the church understood the meaning of “go down, Moses, and tell old Pharaoh to let my people go.” The church understood the meaning of saying “we shall overcome.”

SEVERSON: And after they led the struggle against segregation and police brutality and eventually forced Congress to pass civil rights legislation, it was black pastors who calmed the fury of the LA race riots in 1992. Then things changed. Many black churches began focusing less on social justice issues and more on saving souls and preaching the gospel of prosperity, which teaches that the faithful will be rewarded with material blessings.

REV. MURRAY: I would just admonish those who preach prosperity to remember that the one who founded the Christian church had one pair of shoes.

REV. WHITLOCK: We believe Christ came to set the captives free, to bring sight to the blind, to clothe the naked, to find housing for those who are looking for housing. That’s the work of the church. We must return back to the values that made the black church a true success.

REV. WILLIAMS (speaking at Bryant Temple AME Church service): And we came by here to tell you young people that we’re sorry. We’re sorry because we left you to fend for yourselves.

SEVERSON: Outside the chapel at the special healing service, there was an empty casket. No one needed to ask why. They all know someone.

Woman praying at service: Bring, Heavenly Father, what only you can give…

SEVERSON: A few days earlier, someone dumped the body of a young man who had been shot in the head just a few hundred yards from the church.

REV. WHITLOCK: It’s wonderful labels that we’ve given our children—gang members, Crips, Bloods. I’m sorry. Those are our sons, those are our daughters, those are our cousins, those are our nieces. So we must not be afraid of our own, and if they’re doing wrong, they’re doing wrong.  Selling drugs is wrong. Doing crime is wrong.  Not going to school is wrong.  So the church must speak to the moral—take a moral position on it, but after we take a moral position then we must wrap our arms around them and love them back to a place where they feel safe in the church.

SEVERSON: Most parents in South Central LA are as caring and loving as parents everywhere, but with far greater obstacles. There are few jobs, few public parks to get the kids off the streets, poor schools, and not enough role models. There are now twice as many Latinos as African Americans, but people of all races are starting to realize they’re in this together.

REV. MURRAY: If under the skin all people are kin, if all human beings have an area that can be approached, then we need to find what that area is and go to it, because the problems are not going to fix themselves.

SEVERSON: There are some signs of progress. Inner city pastors have managed to wrangle some new affordable housing. Some of the estimated 40,000 gang members have been persuaded to try to go straight. Pastors are getting more involved. And there’s one more change on the front lines: A majority of those asking to receive the mantle are women.

Woman pastor speaking to group: …that we have to make the difference. That’s what I learned today.

REV. WILLIAMS: People are dying in the streets. We’re saying that people are engaging in risky behavior. So you’ve got to come out behind your stained glass windows and come out here and help people, because if you don’t, all of those problems are going to end up, and they are ending up, on your doorstep.

SEVERSON: They’ve heard promises of help before, promises often not kept. Now it’s the most trusted men and women in the neighborhood who are offering hope.

REV. WILLIAMS (speaking at Bryant Temple AME Church service): If we lock arms, if we continue to move and work together, we will improve the communities where we live, work, and worship. I came by here to tell you to stand on your feet, because we gonna be more better. Let’s give God some praise….

SEVERSON: So far, the Old Lions have passed the mantle to about 400 younger pastors who seem determined to do what authorities have been unable to do without them.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in South Central Los Angeles.

BOB ABERNETHY (Anchor): We have a story today about a remarkable man in California.  He is a Catholic priest from Ireland who has ministered for 37 years to both African Americans and Latinos in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Saul Gonzalez reports.

SAUL GONZALEZ (Contributing Correspondent): The Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts has long been synonymous with inner-city desperation and despair. It’s the neighborhood that exploded in urban unrest, after all, in 1965, and then again during LA’s 1992 riots.

Today, Watts is still home to some of the meanest streets in the city, but they’re streets walked regularly by Father Peter Banks, a Catholic priest who, dressed in his robes, rope belt, and straw hat, looks like a fish very much out of water.

Born and raised in rural Ireland, Banks arrived as a young priest in Watts in 1973, assigned to the Saint Lawrence of Brindisi Church.

FATHER PETER BANKS: My picture of America before I came was Hollywood, Disneyland, and the beach. So I got into the car, we drove up Century and we crossed Vermont, and I began to realize this is a very different world. It was all black, and the very first Sunday I stood up on the altar and I said what am I doing here? How will I ever understand the people? Will they understand me?

GONZALEZ: In the decades since, though, this Irish priest and the people of Watts have come to know each other very well, and Father Banks has become a beloved figure both in his church and the wider community. Father Banks says his taking an active role in the day-to-day life of the community has been key to being accepted by the residents of Watts.

(Speaking to Father Banks): How important is it for you to do what we are doing now, to get out and to walk the streets?

FATHER BANKS: Oh, I feel part of the flesh and blood and soul of Watts.

GONZALEZ: As he walks through the community, Banks meets and ministers to the casualties of drugs, poverty, and violence in Watts. One of them goes by the name “Red Man.”

FATHER BANKS: Now, he never minds me saying this, but this man was shot thirteen times and survived.

RED MAN: I love this man. Really, he is the only white man who can walk Watts with no gun, just walking by faith, and walk here and know everybody. Everybody knows Father Peter. He is the true father of Watts. He is a real servant of God.

GONZALEZ: Red Man and a friend then ask Father Banks to lead them in an impromptu street corner prayer.

Central to the story of Watts and Father Banks’s church is the incredible demographic shift that has occurred in this community in recent years. Once synonymous with the African-American community, Watts is increasingly Latino. With that change has come tension.

FATHER BANKS: They call it the black and brown conflict. How do we get black and brown to come together?

GONZALEZ: That conflict sometimes expresses itself in violence, but often its face is a soft, unofficial form of segregation. Latinos largely stick to themselves, African Americans as well.

(Speaking to African American girl): You wouldn’t go out of your way to hang out with Hispanic kids?

AFRICAN-AMERICAN GIRL: Definitely no, I really wouldn’t because, I know it might sound racist, but if I see a Mexican girl or a Latino girl I’m just, like, not hanging out with her because she is just not my people. I know that’s wrong, but that’s just, like, the way it is in our society and our community.

GONZALEZ: It’s such feelings that Father Banks has tried to battle in Watts, making both African Americans and Latinos feel welcome in his congregation and breaking down walls of mutual suspicion and hostility. He’s done that by learning Spanish, slowly integrating some church services, and developing sensitivity to the problems of both Latinos and African Americans.

GONZALEZ: Father Banks says being Irish can actually be an advantage in his work in Watts.

FATHER BANKS: I feel it is. One time I was talking to the black kids, that’s when I came first, and they were saying something about the whites, and I held up my arm and said, “Look at me,” and this little girl said to me, “Father Peter, you aren’t white, you’re Irish.”

I can relate very much to the black in the sense of the Irish being persecuted. It used to say in the States, I think, “No black or Irish need apply.” So I feel I do identify a lot with the African-American people and their pain and their suffering. I’m able to relate to the Latinos and say I am an immigrant, and I tell the Latino people, I say, I am an immigrant, too. I came here and, I said, I am far away from my own land. I know what you go through, too.

GONZALEZ: Members of Father Banks’s congregation say they appreciate his efforts to build bridges of understanding between African Americans and Latinos.

MARIAN ANTUCHA (Latino parishioner speaking in Spanish with English translation): He helps all the people, African Americans, Latinos, the entire community. To us, Father Peter doesn’t recognize borders. He’s a person who helps everybody, and that’s why we’re here.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN PARISHIONER: If PR and public relationships, communications was a gift from God, poof, he got it ten times, you know, because he can get out there and talk to different people, and they just feel his love, and he will tell them to come here, and then they feel the love. It’s just a relationship that blossoms.

GONZALEZ: As he’s gotten older, Banks says he’s increasingly focused his ministry on the education and safety of Watts’ youngest, at the elementary and middle school operated by his church.

FATHER BANKS: They know more about pain than I do in my lifetime, and they are only six, seven, eight, nine years old. You saw them this morning there, dying for affection. If I don’t feel optimistic and I feel tired, I come over to the school. I get energy from the school, energy from these children.

Hope is to be able to sing in the middle of the darkness, and I think that’s what hope is for me. I can still sing in the middle of the darkness.

GONZALEZ: However, after serving the spiritual and material needs of this community for much of his adult life, Father Peter Banks will soon depart Watts. He’s been asked to take a job as a church recruiter in a rural area of California. Although he says he feels duty-bound to fill this position, Banks acknowledges he feels conflicted about leaving this community.

FATHER BANKS: That’s an emotional issue for me. It’s going to be a big struggle to leave here. It’s going to be—I’m at peace with God. That’s all I can say. I am at peace with God. I feel it is God’s will that I continue his work, and we need priests for the church and brothers and…

GONZALEZ: But it hurts?

FATHER BANKS: Oh, it hurts deeply. I have put so much of my life in here. I have invested so much in children. It is the biggest change of my life. I feel I am leaving home twice. I left Ireland 37 years ago, and I feel like I am leaving home again, too. But I’ve come to terms with it, and I know that I am doing it for a higher cause, a higher power.

GONZALEZ: The people whose lives Father Banks has touched in Watts hope his example will inspire others to continue his work of cultivating peace and understanding in a community that so needs them.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now a story about a former state legislator who believed the answer to crime was more and more prisons — until he got locked up himself. Now he’s leading a faith-based program for prisoner rehabilitation, and he says it works. Compared to a national recidivism rate of 67 percent, for his ex-cons, he says, it is just eight percent. Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: It’s been a long haul for Pat Nolan, raised in a family of nine children in a crime-ridden Los Angeles neighborhood.

PAT NOLAN (President, Justice Fellowship, Prison Fellowship Ministries): Crime was an absolute part of our life there to the point that every time you went out, whether to church or school or the store, you were in danger of being robbed or knocked down and beaten.

SEVERSON: Then, after Catholic school and law school, Nolan won a seat in the California Assembly and became the Republican minority leader hell-bent on putting the bad guys in prison.

Mr. NOLAN: We built more new prisons than any state in history. We built more — I think it was 11 or 12 prisons, not one new university, and I think that’s a sad commentary. But at the time I thought that would make us safer.

JACK COWLEY (Former Warden, Oklahoma Department of Corrections): He was a madman. He was Attila the Hun when it comes to lock them up and throw away the key.

SEVERSON: But then the “lock-em-up” assemblyman got locked up himself, caught accepting illegal campaign contributions in an FBI sting. Nolan spent over two years in prison and was shocked at what he experienced there.

Mr. NOLAN: I saw virtually nothing was being done to change the mind or hearts of the inmates. Nothing was being done to prepare them to live healthy productive lives when they got out.

SEVERSON: Suddenly the hard-nosed prison builder had a change of mind and heart himself. He found a new calling — reforming the system he helped build, a system he now calls human warehousing. He’s still in favor of locking up the bad guys but says there are too many people who could be productive citizens languishing behind bars. And he is not alone. Mike Schnobrich is with the Council of Prison Locals and a guard at the U.S. prison in Florence, Colorado.

MIKE SCHNOBRICH (Council of Prison Locals and Guard, United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, Florence, Colorado): When I hired on back in ‘92, we were told that we no longer engaged in any sort of rehabilitation. If an inmate has a drug problem, they can do a little bit of drug treatment, they can get a GED, but not a whole lot more after that. And so it really is, for the most part, almost a warehousing operation. And I think there’s not too many people in the system who would disagree.

SEVERSON: Nolan now heads a faith-based program that operates in several states called Justice Fellowship, an arm of Prison Fellowship Ministries. It offers mentoring programs for inmates while they’re still in prison and when they get out, so they’ll stay out. This year 650,000 Americans will be coming home from prison, most of them unprepared to re-enter society. That worries former wardens like Jack Cowley.

Mr. COWLEY: Because [we] can no longer tolerate a 67 percent recidivism rate in this country. It’s not tolerable, and we’re not going to put up with it anymore. Quite frankly, it’s got to stop.

SEVERSON: He says the broken system is costing American tax payers billions of wasted dollars each year.

Mr. COWLEY: You can’t afford, as a taxpayer, a $60 billion ticket for crime in this country any longer. Bridges are falling down, people, and we cannot afford to take this money and put it in something that is no longer working.

SEVERSON: There are two sets of statistics that help explain the impact on our society of U.S. prison policy. Number one: 95 percent of Americans sentenced to prison are going to be coming out, maybe to your neighborhood. Number two: as many as seven out of 10 of those will end up back in prison within three years. There are so few rehabilitation programs very few offenders are prepared to make it on the outside. And it’s no wonder that most employers won’t hire them.

One exception is Korns Galvanizing in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. At any given time, at least half the workers here are ex-cons like Jack Shipley who spent over 43 years of his life behind bars for burglary and robbery. He’s was shocked when he applied at Korns over three years ago.

JACK SHIPLEY (Employee, Korns Galvanizing Company): And then I explained to Mr. Heider who I was and what I was in this town, and he said, “We don’t care. We don’t care at all.” He said, “What we care about is what you can do, you know, if you can work.”

BARRY HEIDER (Vice President, Operations, Korns Galvanzing Company): A lot of these fellows just pump me up. They’ve got smiles on their faces and an attitude to succeed.

SEVERSON: Barry Heider is the boss here, the man who was willing to take the risk, and it’s a risk that’s paid off. The company is preparing a study on how many of the 150 or so ex-con employees have stayed out of prison, but Heider says he’s certain Korns’ rate of success is much better than the national average.

Mr. HEIDER: But I think our success rate altogether is far better, and, again, that has to do with support, what they receive allegedly from the penal system is guidance. But there’s no support.

SEVERSON: The support comes from one another, from people like Harry Price, in prison 10 years for robbery. He’s been out seven and is now the plant supervisor.

HARRY PRICE (Plant Supervisor, Korns Galvanizing Company): It has what we call Korns love. We’re a little rough on each other, but we won’t let someone else come in here and be rough on us.

SEVERSON: Religion is an important part of the program here, although no particular religion. Most employees attend church services and receive constant mentoring from the old-timers.

Pat Nolan firmly believes that without religion most rehab programs won’t work.

Mr. NOLAN: And the problem is we do nothing to reform the character of inmates to change their heart. They have no moral framework to decide whether something’s good or bad.

SEVERSON: Nolan is becoming a loud voice nationally for prison reform. Governor Schwarzenegger has appointed him to a strike team to fix California’s prison system. He travels extensively, speaks constantly, and spends a good deal of time lobbying Congress. He has become a force to be reckoned with. Jack Cowley said at first he was skeptical of Nolan’s motives.

Mr. COWLEY: Oh, here’s just another one of those politicians who went to prison and found the Lord, and, you know, I’ve got to put up with this. But he is the genuine deal. Yes, the genuine deal.

Mr. NOLAN: Morally we have to care about them. This is a child of God, and just as they have sinned, we’ve sinned, and if we can accept Jesus’ forgiveness, how can we deny it to them?

SEVERSON: Many of the prisoners released this year were incarcerated for nonviolent crimes like drug possession, which landed Sedrick Crochron in prison. He’s now a Korns employee.

SEDRICK CROCHRON (Employee, Korns Galvanizing Company): I had a son. I tried to take care of him the fast way and, you know, “Johnny Lawman” caught up with me.

SEVERSON: What’s changed in Sedrick’s life is that he now has a skill and someone who cares for him.

Mr. CROCHRON: They’re excellent bosses. I like Harry and Barry. They’re like the uncles I never had.

SEVERSON: Pat Nolan says there’s overwhelming evidence that Justice Fellowship does work.

Mr. NOLAN: A University of Pennsylvania study studied our graduates with a matched set of people with similar offenses. Those that graduated from our program, completed it all, had an eight percent recidivism rate.

SEVERSON: There are still wardens who are reluctant to allow such things as mentoring programs, but reformers like Jack Cowley are fighting back.

Mr. COWLEY: What we tell wardens is you’re no longer the king, as I used to be, quite frankly, behind these walls, because what goes on here affects my life outside. It affects my public safety. And what I tell wardens is, okay, you don’t want to reduce recidivism — fine. I’ll just call the local newspaper and tell them that you’re not interested in providing programs that work.

SEVERSON: Pat Nolan is convinced that his time in prison was all part of God’s plan to get him where he is today.

Mr. NOLAN: C.S. Lewis says that we’re like God’s sculptures, and it’s the chisel strokes that are so painful that he uses to make us his work of art.

SEVERSON: These days you’ll find this sculpture-in-motion lobbying Congress and anyone who will listen for a new Second Chance Act to help prisoners re-enter society.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

*CORRECTION: Several viewers pointed out that in this story we said Catholics “worship” Mary. The word should have been “venerate,” and we thank you for reminding us of that.

BOB ABERNETHY: Every December 12, U.S. cities with large Mexican or Central American populations are the sites of colorful celebrations honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe. These public devotions to the mother of Jesus may seem like cultural curiosities today, but before long, celebrations such as this may be common all over the country — because one American Catholic in three is Hispanic.

Ruben Martinez reports from Los Angeles, where Hispanics make up almost two-thirds of the Catholic population:

RUBEN MARTINEZ: In a country where devotion conjures images of prayer indoors, at home, or at church, Latino Catholics in ever-increasing numbers celebrate the feast day of the Virgin of Guadalupe in massive public demonstrations of adoration. While impressive, the observances that take place in California and the American Southwest on this day pale in comparison to the huge celebration in Mexico City, which can draw as many as five million worshippers.

The celebration is rooted in a Mexican story nearly 5,000 years old. According to tradition, the olive-skinned virgin appeared before the Aztec Indian Juan Diego in 1531. It was a few short years after the Spanish conquest, a time of untold misery for the decimated Indian population.

Mr. LUIS LEON (Arizona State University): One of the first things she told him was, rhetorically she asked, “Am I not here? Who is your mother? Am I not here to help you? I’ve come to help the Indians.” And you have to remember that at the time of the apparition, 1531, the Aztec capital had just been conquered 10 years earlier, so Indians were literally dying by the millions. And Guadalupe’s apparition healed those wounds.

MARTINEZ: Diego asked the virgin for a sign that would serve as proof of her appearance. With winter approaching, she is believed to have showered him with dozens of red roses, and her image was emblazoned upon his cloak.

Devotion to the virgin is more than just a mere affirmation of faith. It is also a way for Mexicans and Latin Americans to give flesh and spirit to their mixed European and Indian identity. And in this era of migration, the virgin also crosses borders.

Tens of thousands made the pilgrimage to Our Lady Queen of Angels Church, better known as La Placita, the original pueblo church of Los Angeles, which features a huge outdoor altar to her.

Father ALBERTO VASQUEZ: You know, when our blessed lady appeared to Juan Diego, the very first thing he heard was music, and that’s very important to our — for our culture, music, flowers. So music being such an important thing for us, it’s — just has to be that way that we’re going to salute somebody we love with music.

MARTINEZ: The numbers of virgin devotees have increased sharply in recent years with the massive influx of immigrants from Mexico and Central America. In Los Angeles alone, the day before the feast day, some 50,000 people came to the old Olympic Coliseum to worship* the lady whom they call the Empress of the Americas. For 19 years, Maria Aguilar has been a member of the Guadalupe Devotional Group. This year she led the rosary at the coliseum.

Ms. MARIA AGUILAR: This was very, very unique and very special because we had so many people praying to our blessed mother in their own language. It was beautiful.

MARTINEZ: Among the many rituals of the feast day is a pilgrimage to a place of worship. In Los Angeles, they come from all over the city. In the wee hours at La Placita, faithful sing the “Mananitas,” a traditional Latin American birthday song.

Ms. MARTHA SANCHEZ (Through Translator): Wherever we are in the world, wherever there are Latinos, the virgin is there for us.

Mr. ERNESTO REYES: We know that we have hope in life when we think about her and everything.

Ms. LEONARDA SOTOMAYOR (Through Translator): The faith is strong in Mexico, the love people have for the virgin, but you feel it more here because we are far from our homeland.

Mr. LEON: The immigrant experience, whenever a person is coming, is one of tremendous disorientation and loneliness and fear. It’s a very frightening experience, entering into an unknown land. Guadalupe adds solace and comfort, just like she did in the beginning to the Indian Juan Diego. She protected him. She was going to comfort him. She does the same to immigrants.

MARTINEZ: Much of the mystical experience of Guadalupe takes place in public. She is represented in hundreds of murals on the streets of cities throughout the Southwest and increasingly in parts of the Midwest.

Ms. AGUILAR: As you walk in East L.A., what do you see on the streets, on the murals, on the cars? It’s our Lady of Guadalupe. And sometimes, you know, you say, “My gosh, what is it about this blessed mother? We don’t see any pictures of Jesus anywhere. We don’t see any crosses; maybe one or two crosses along the way. But you see her everywhere.”

MARTINEZ: Eva Rivera owns a furniture store in South Central Los Angeles. She commissioned a mural of the virgin for her business.

Ms. EVA RIVERA (Through Translator): I got the idea because people would constantly graffiti my walls, and I don’t know, thank God, ever since I had the mural made, everything has changed.

MARTINEZ: Even religious symbols are vulnerable. Vandals recently defaced Rivera’s mural and dozens of others in Los Angeles, prompting an outcry from virgin devotees.

Ms. RIVERA (Through Translator): It made me very mad to see that, and I said, “What kind of people would do such a thing?” Then I looked for someone to restore it.

MARTINEZ: For many devotees, whether one, two, or more generations removed from the old country, the virgin seems to offer hope, no matter where they are on their journey from country to country or language to language. With the numbers of Latino Catholics steadily increasing in the U.S., the virgin’s feast and other Old World traditions will likely be more and more visible in the American religious landscape in years to come. Indeed, the virgin’s hold on her flock appears to be even more powerful on this side of the border, where the immigrants, it seems, need her more than ever.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Ruben Martinez in Los Angeles.