By Harry Murphy

The Immaculate Conception St. Vincent De Paul Society has begun a program to help Catholic men in Georgia’s prison system.

The conference’s previous emphasis had been on inner city work, but “with our limited resources and manpower we found we just couldn’t cope with the need there,” said member Tom Zaworski.

“For every person we served, we found five waiting,” he added. “And sometimes we would literally run into other Christian agency workers at the doors of the needy. There was a lot of duplication.

In looking for a neglected area in which to work, the Vincentians decided upon the state prison system, where an unknown number of Catholics are serving time.

The Rev. Dan Joiner, a Baptist minister and the state prison chaplain, was contacted to help set up a program so the Vincentians could work through the new prison Diagnostic and Classification Center in Butts County near Jackson.

All prisoners going into the state system are processed through the center. “This gave us an opportunity to find the Catholic inmate as he goes in, to find out about his home situation and whether he needed help,” said Zaworski.

“We wanted to begin a fellowship right away, to let him know right from the start that Catholicism had not forsaken him just because he has done something wrong,” he added.

The confidential nature of the Society’s work troubled the prison officials some, but a program was finally worked out.

“We agreed with the officials to tell them if the prisoner intended to do harm to himself or another human being, and we inform the prisoners of this agreement,” said Zaworski.

The first meeting with the prisoners was May 3 at which two walked out and left only eight. Since then, 29 personal visitations have been made to 15 men. Eight additional visits have been made by a priest from Immaculate Conception.

Some 125 magazines have been donated to the men: two Catholic publishing houses send books to the library there, and each Vincentian carries his own personal lending library with him on a visit.

Some other accomplishments:

-Getting a paycheck for an inmate who was locked up the day before he was to be paid.

-Finding out the status of a prisoner’s son injured in an accident.

-Helping to straighten out the tangled affairs of a soldier-prisoner so that possibly he can continue his service career.

-Getting a prisoner credit for 117 days spent in county jail awaiting trial.

The Society wants to keep up with how many Catholics there are in each camp and prison branch and to notify the local priest that they are there.

One of the program’s highlights was a Mass June 11 attended by 150 men, 15 of them Catholic. Eight partook of the sacraments. The Rev. Ben Wright, a Methodist minister and the Center’s chaplain, participated in the services.

Zaworski hopes that someday a priest will be assigned to work full-time within the prison system.