Working among prisoners

At present, I am working in the City of Mexico in a big parish. Among other pastoral activities we are doing, we are visiting a military prison where over 280 inmates are receiving our help twice a month.

When I was in Detroit, I used to help in five prisons, saying mass in Spanish, paying visits to the prisoners and helping the families of some of these inmates. I did the same in Peru.

Now that I am in Mexico, I am doing this too with a group of volunteers. Unfortunately, we do not have so much material to work with. I remember that, while still in Malta, I went twice to Paola prisons with the Prison Fellowship members but I lost total contact with them.

I would very much like get in contact with the Prison Fellowship group so we can get in contact once again and see how we can work on the important mission together.

FR EMANUEL PARNIS, MSSP – MEXICO CITY

What made Gozo, Gozo?

Xlendi in Gozo. Photo: Daniel Cilia

It has been long coming to you guys.

What should one do after reading the Talking Point by the Gozo Tourism Association’s CEO, Joe Muscat (July 15), in which he blah-blahs about ‘Changing Gozo’s tourism model’?

Should one laugh or cry? Does he not realise that it is, in most instances, already far too late? Where was he when, long years ago, this writer and others asked: what makes Gozo, Gozo?

Did they all then, as an association, inter alia choose to ask themselves whether the then already outlandish rate of building and construction projects, as continuously obscenely approved by the PA, for places in Xlendi, Sannat and elsewhere on that once attractive island, could be sustained without permanently ruining what factually made Gozo attractive to both foreign and Maltese visitors?

I had then written that, after Gozo, it would be the turn of Comino… and so it factually became about… and I had then also opined that, soon, some (pecuniary!) eyes will also be thrown on Filfla, certainly pleasures yet to come.

What “working together will surely bring success” is he talking about? Does he mean Gozitan businessmen working together? It’s too late, chum, you are now all a morally spent force, made up solely of people who look only at their pockets and are totally unable and/or gutless to call a spade a spade.

If you want a factual, objective, numbers-based suggestion you can all start by trying to arrange a meeting with the relevant politicians and insist that between the end of 2022 and the end of 2023 the number of building permits for Gozo approved comes down by (at least?) 50 per cent and that’s just for starters.

Try putting that sort of suggestion on the table when next you have your augured “opportunity to act together and put forward to policymakers’ concrete proposals” as, sure as eggs are eggs, your members will all unite to say “that’s just trash”.

Laugh or cry?

JOHN CONSIGLIO – BIRKIRKARA