Jail is a hellish, violent place to spend time --- nothing much to do, lots of noise, no privacy, no freedom, separated from family and friends, dangerous, lots of bad guys --- according to Gonzalo De Vivero, chaplain of the North County Correctional Facility at the sprawling Peter Pitchess Detention Center in Saugus, which holds some 8,000 inmates.

The 56-year-old native of Peru is sitting on a sofa in his Reseda home, recovering from knee surgery, while his wife, Virginia, who works in adult formation at Our Lady of Grace Church in Encino, putters in an adjoining room. Geraldo thinks before he speaks, usually with a serious expression. But a smile often creases his handsome chiseled face.

"We see an incredible amount of pain," says the 56-year-old native of Peru. "We see an incredible amount of injustice about people who are locked up for no reason, or very little reason. Through arbitrary laws like Three-Strikes, which they don't even have in Third World countries. And people are scared into accepting plea bargains for crimes they did not commit.

"It's no place for the mentally ill or addicts. Most of the inmates are uneducated minorities, which tells me something is wrong. I see young deputies, who are doing their required service in the jails, come in wanting to do good and become cynical and hard. Sometimes, you know, I want to start a revolution.

He stops for a moment, before adding: "But there are a lot of good things that do happen, even in this terrible atmosphere we work under."

Open to the spirit

Gonzalo doesn't like to concentrate on the negative aspects of California's penal system he's toiled in for a dozen years through the Los Angeles Archdiocese's Office of Restorative Justice. Instead, he talks about the joys of the vocation he discovered as an adult, after being a commercial artist and art director for some 25 years.

Like the telephone call he arranged for an inmate a day before his brother in Texas was executed. Or the prisoners who helped a retarded inmate fill out the necessary paperwork to get transferred to another facility. And just a couple weeks ago, when an inmate came back from court depressed after losing his case, another prisoner asked God to give what he was praying for to his bummed-out buddy.

"When you experience those moments inside, it just blows your mind," he says. "That, in the middle of this deprivation of human values, we still have people who are so open to the Spirit."

In the midst of this brutal, surreal world, Gonzalo goes about his work organizing Communion services, supervising volunteers plus paying "visits at the bars" to whoever has requested to see a Catholic chaplain. His plan for each day has nothing to do with how the day actually plays out. "This is God's kingdom, and he is in charge," he says.

Many inmates tell him they want to turn their lives over to God by praying a hundred rosaries or reading the Bible from cover to cover. He often has to remind them that what they really need to do first is attend AA meetings or get counseling to find out what's happening with them internally.

"If you're going to pray for the angels to come to help you, you might as well have a very comfortable seat," he tells inmates, "because they're not coming. Not that way. They come as regular human beings and in regular ways."

So he spends a lot of his time listening, very carefully, because there's usually another story lying under the one a prisoner is telling him.

And through listening, a chemistry --- a relationship --- often develops. That's when Gonzalo can respond, engaging the man by offering his own experience about how he would tackle the problem.

He says many people locked up have issues with alcohol, drugs, lack of self-esteem as well as the way inmates were raised. Court-approved drug programs and even AA groups in his facility, however, are few and far between.

Meeting men where they are

"But we don't have to wait 'til a man goes into a program to start working with him," he points out. "The man has to start his recovery on the day he surrenders to the reality that he has a problem. That's where I like to meet them.

"Now we come and we want to talk about God and leading a good life. But the truth is, that's not how it's going to work. We have to meet them where they are; we've got to work with what they have. And we've got to give them hope that there's always a better --- if they want --- way."

Gonzalo and Father Gerard Weber of Our Lady of Grace developed a program four years ago to do just that. "Finding the 'Way' in Jail" is a once-a-week, month-long workshop to let inmates see that they haven't been forgotten by God.

The sessions are designed to help people in jail talk honestly and frankly about life, God and faith. But they can also be used as tools to prepare inmates who want to return to the sacraments or become Catholic.

At the North County Correctional Facility, more than 100 inmates currently take part in the English and Spanish group sessions, which are run by eight volunteers. The chaplain hopes the grass-roots program will expand to many other correctional facilities.

Friends often ask Gonzalo how he can work day after day with men who have committed crimes and often have no desire to change their ways. He tells them he doesn't look at what they've done. Instead, he focuses on what they can become.

"When I'm going to the jail, I have to recognize the limited amount of power I have to solve anything," he says. "I have to get off my white horse and put my feet on the ground. I'm here to do the little things --- not to fight all the injustices of the world. Because that will choke me, and I won't do anything.

"When I go inside, seeing how justice and injustice works, the grace of God reveals itself in the most difficult moments of our life. And when I go to church on Sunday, sometimes I feel completely separated.

"But we need both," he stresses. "One is not doing God's work better than the other."

Editor's note: "The Faith in Our Lives" is a series spotlighting Catholics in various walks of life, and how they connect faith with what they do.