Belgian missionary known for prison ministry buried in Lima, Peru

Published: 2006-03-29

LIMA, Peru (CNS) -- Father Hubert Lanssiers, a Belgian missionary who spent the last three decades ministering to inmates in Lima's overcrowded and sometimes violent prisons, was buried March 24. Before the funeral, his coffin was taken to Lima's two largest prisons for men and the city's women's prison so that inmates could pay their last respects. A longtime champion of human rights, Father Lanssiers, a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, was best known for his efforts to win the release of people imprisoned unjustly on terrorism charges during the political violence of the 1980s and 1990s. He died March 23 at age 76. The missionary once said, "How many cubic meters are in there in an innocent person's cell? A dozen? It's astonishing that such a small space can contain so much sorrow."

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