BY ERIKA ANDERSON

Staff Writer

JACKSON--In his nearly 10 years as chaplain at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, Deacon Tom Silvestri has learned to hate the sin and not the sinner.

While Deacon Silvestri was in formation for his permanent diaconate ordination, Dale Young, a psychiatric nurse at the Fulton County Jail, gave a talk about the need for prison and jail ministry. He went to a jail with her only to find that he "wasn't sure he wanted to do it."

However, after speaking with Father Albert Jowdy, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas, Alpharetta, Deacon Silvestri decided to give the ministry another try, this time in a prison rather than a jail.

"It was more of a feeling that I would like to try this and see how it works," he said. "I had no real reason for going there...I just thought I would try it."

Deacon Silvestri went through orientation meetings with Father Dan Stack, then a parochial vicar at St. Philip Benizi, Jonesboro, who was transferred to St. Bernadette Church in Cedartown, leaving the deacon to minister at Jackson alone.

"The first time I went in by myself was an adventure," he said. "I walked in and was very nervous. I was doing a Communion service for six guys under a death sentence and I wasn't sure what was going to happen."

"From the time I walked in there, though, until the time I left, I had completely forgotten where I was and who I was with, and I realized that God really wanted me to be there."

It was that experience that has kept Deacon Silvestri in the ministry for so many years.

"It was just something that moved me--moved me enough to stay there for almost 10 years," he said.

Deacon Silvestri, a member of Holy Cross, Atlanta, goes to the prison every Wednesday and presides at two Communion services, one for the men on death row and another for the general population of the prison. The makeshift church in the barbershop of the prison and the security guards that stand nearby are stark reminders that he is not in a normal parish setting.

"The whole experience is something quite unique and completely different from what you do in a church experience," he said. "When you assist with a Mass, you are surrounded by people who want to help you...When you are in a prison, there are some that want to help you, but most are against you."

"It's not that they're openly hostile--it's just different and it needs to be different." he said. "There are 1,800 men who are in there for anything from being drunk too much to committing some of the most horrible atrocities known to man. There's no telling who you're going to be next to at a given time. Security needs to be paramount."

Every six or seven months, Archbishop John F. Donoghue celebrates Mass for the prisoners at the Diagnostic and Classification Prison and once a month Deacon Silvestri assists with a Mass celebrated by Msgr. Henry Gracz, pastor of St. James the Apostle Church, McDonough, or Father John Howren, parochial vicar at St. James.

Msgr. Gracz, who has been ministering at the prison in Jackson for a little more than a year, has also ministered at the Fulton County Jail for three years. He said that the first time he walked into the prison he was "scared stiff."

"It's amazing...they kind of look at you and wonder if you're going to be a flash in the pan or if you are going to stay there," he said. "By the second or third time, it is very easy to develop a sense of respect for each other. These men sing and pray and are really trying to walk with the Lord."

Deacon Silvestri said that in his years of prison ministry, his attitude toward prisoners has also changed.

"I think I've come to understand that what they really are, are just people who have made a terrible mistake--some realize it and some don't," he said. "You have to hate the sin and not the sinner. Sometimes that's hard. Robbery is robbery, but rape and murder are something completely different."

Deacon Silvestri has prepared two men for execution during his years in prison ministry, experiences that he hopes never to go through again.

"The experience of being with two men who were executed was traumatic," he said. "One of them I baptized 20 minutes (before his execution). He already had his head shaved and his dying uniform on."

Although Deacon Silvestri has become comfortable with the prisoners over the years, some things remain a struggle for him.

"The awful thing to think about, and what I try not to think about, is that some of these men have been living in a space the size of your bathroom for 10 to 15 years of their life and are able to get out only about six hours a day," he said. "It's not that they are treated unjustly, though. For many of them, that's where they need to be and it's very good that we have places like that."

Working so closely with the men who have committed felonies, Deacon Silvestri remains a firm opponent of the death penalty.

"I've said, and I will always say, that I don't think anyone should take another person's life, and that includes the state, but it's the way the law is," he said.