I can’t say that I liked anything at all about prison. But the chapel is probably the thing that I hated the least. It was usually quiet, people were generally friendlier to each other in the chapel, and the two chaplains were decent guys. I was able to use my time in the chapel to answer letters, watch movies, and help other prisoners organize their religious services.
March 31, 2014
“Letter from Loretto”
Hello again from the Federal Correctional Institution at Loretto, Pennsylvania. Many of you have written to ask me if I’m still working in the chapel. The answer is yes, and it occurred to me that I’ve not really said much about the chapel. So in the interest of broadening your understanding of this horrible place, here’s some background.
FCI Loretto used to be a Catholic monastery in a town that is also home to St. Francis and Mt. Aloysius Colleges. The Bureau of Prisons bought the monastery and turned it into a low-security prison. A minimum-security camp came later. The monks’ bedrooms were converted into prisoners’ rooms. So instead of two monks per room, we have six or eight prisoners. Gross overcrowding is probably the one thing that the BOP is good at.
In the 1990s, the BOP added another housing unit, Central Unit, to cram another thirty-five to four hundred people into a ridiculously, and probably unconstitutionally, small space. That’s where I live.
The chapel is the monastery’s original chapel and is located in what is now North Unit. The BOP added two chaplains’ offices and a small library by blocking off some space. They added a concrete block “worship room” across the hall, and the old choir loft became a TV room for North 2 Unit. Otherwise, it’s a real chapel with stained glass windows and everything. There are crucifixes hanging and Stations of the Cross on the wall, but it’s an ecumenical place. The altar and several large pieces of furniture are on wheels, so they can be moved out of the way depending on what group has the chapel reserved at any given time.
I’m an orderly in the chapel. On Tuesday mornings all nineteen chapel employees vacuum, dust, and polish the chapel, the auxiliary worship room, and the offices. Otherwise, my job is to provide prisoners with books and religious videos from the library. I work eight hours a week. I do this job because I enjoy the solace and the ability to sit at one of the prison’s very few desks and write in peace.
FCI Loretto has two chaplains, both of whom are good men. In fact, they are the only two staff members to shake my hand since I arrived here. They are, of course, cops first and chaplains second, but the unfortunate fact of their BOP employment doesn’t get in the way of their ministry to prisoners.
There is a myriad of faiths represented here. There are, of course, Catholics, mainstream and evangelical Protestants, Buddhists, Jews, and Muslims. We have a few Mormons and Orthodox, of which I am one. But there are a good number of faiths that I either knew little about or had never heard of. They include, in no particular order:
—Nation of Islam: originally founded by Wallace D. Fard in 1930 in the Midwest and popularized by Elijah Muhammad after Fard’s disappearance in 1934. NOI followers believe that all humans were black until an evil genius named Yakub created a white race of devils. Believers maintain that upon the start of the end times, NOI followers will be taken to heaven in a spaceship currently buried in a field in Japan.
—Moorish Science Temple: founded in Newark, New Jersey, in 1913 by Timothy Drew, who took the name Noble Drew Ali, MST adherents believe all African-Americans are originally from Morocco. They use a version of the Quran written by Noble Drew Ali and completely unrelated to the Muslim Quran.
—Santerίa: combining elements of traditional Catholicism and voodoo, most Santerίa followers at Loretto are from the Caribbean.
—Messianics: also known as “Jews for Jesus,” Messianics believe in combining Jewish and fundamentalist Christian teachings, refer to Jesus only as “Yeshua,” and refuse to work on Saturdays, which they believe is the true Christian Sabbath. The group was founded in Northern California in 1970.
—Rastafarians: the Rastas are a messianic movement among poor Jamaicans founded in 1930 before spreading to the US and UK. Rastas believe that former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie is the messiah who came to liberate all black people, who are the true biblical Jews. Followers smoke marijuana as a sacrament, although not at Loretto.
—Native Americans: the various Native American tribes have a sweat lodge behind the chapel, which they use on Saturdays. One Native American friend of mine, who is a local tribal chief, told me that the “real Indians” stay away from the sweat lodge because it has been taken over by “fake Indians” who like to sit in the lodge for hours and “pretend they’re Native Americans.”
—Wiccans: I honestly don’t know anything about the Wiccans, other than there are a lot of them and they represent a wide variety of beliefs. Some call themselves Druids, some Pagans, and others Satanists. (The Satanists can buy pentagram necklaces from a religious supply catalogue in the chapel office.) Know that your tax money is being well spent: the woodshop recently crafted an altar and magic wands for the Wiccans to use in their services.
One prisoner, a tax cheat, has taken it upon himself to create his own cult and to write his own bible by taking out the parts of the real bible that he doesn’t like, then adding his own philosophy. I’m told that there’s a lot of fire and brimstone. This prisoner has actually started “baptizing” people in the bathroom and now has several followers. He went so far as to write a letter to a visiting pastor saying that the pastor would go to hell if he didn’t join the cult. The chaplains do not recognize the cult as a legitimate faith group.
We had a Seventh Day Adventist who worked in the chapel for one day. When he came in to start his shift, he looked at me and said, “What religion are you?”
“Greek Orthodox,” I said.
He looked at the guy next to me. “What religion are you?”
“Mormon,” he responded.
The Adventist looked at the third employee in the room. “What religion are you?”
“Catholic.”
The Adventist shouted, “All of y’all’s religions is false! You all going to hell!”
I said, “I don’t think you’re going to fit in very well here.” The next day he was sent to solitary and fired for stealing milk from the cafeteria.
The chapel is supposed to be a place of contemplation, meditation, and prayer. It is sometimes that. More often it is a lounge for pedophiles, who congregate there because they can sit and relax undisturbed. (Honestly, they can sit and relax undisturbed anywhere because they have the run of the place. But they prefer the chapel and the library.) I’ve already beaten this dead horse so I won’t get into it again.
I’m not trying to convey the notion that the chapel is all peace, love, and flowers. It’s not. Many otherwise religious people refuse to go to services because there are so many pedophiles there. The chaplains’ hands are tied. They can’t, after all, have parallel pedophile and non-pedophile religious services. A separate dispute erupted a month ago in the Jewish group between Reformed, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews and instigated by a notorious pederast about whom I’ve written previously and who wanted to take over the group. The kerfuffle resulted in both a chair and a punch being thrown.
The chapel has other problems, too. In my year of incarceration there have been several sexual incidents in the chapel. Some prisoners have sex whenever they can, usually in the showers or under the stairwell near the mailroom, which have no security camera coverage. Unfortunately, the chapel also has no security cameras, and we have to occasionally tell other prisoners to stop making out or to stop fondling each other. When there are no religious services taking place, prisoners can watch movies or listen to religious CDs in the chapel. The low lights sometimes lead to make-out sessions, which we have to break up. I once had to ask a chapel employee to stop necking with his boyfriend. On another occasion, a pedophile was watching a movie that included a scene with a little boy in a bathtub. The pedophile watched the scene over and over and over again, becoming more excited with each viewing. We asked him to leave. Most recently, two guys were in the chapel with their hands up each other’s shirts fondling each other’s nipples. I’m told that security cameras will be installed in the next fiscal year.
I’m also told that funds have been appropriated in the past three years, but security cameras have never been installed. Of course, new TVs in the staff lounges have been installed during that same period. More soon…
Best regards,
John
PS: I’m proud to say that Oscar-nominated documentarian Jim Spione’s film Silenced about the US government’s war on whistleblowing will premiere at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival on April 19. It documents my case in detail, as well as Tom Drake’s and others. Don’t miss it.