Even Violent Drug Cartels Fear God

The New York Times ^ | 4/19/13 | Damien Cave

[marshmallow]

Early on a December morning, Robert Coogan pulled his red Chevy hatchback into the parking lot of the state prison in Saltillo, Mexico. It was frigid outside, the sun had not yet cleared the reddish mountains, and Coogan lingered, staring at the tall black letters on the prison’s high walls: “CERESO” — Centro de Reinserción Social, the place where criminals are supposed to be reformed. Coogan, who has served as chaplain at the prison for a decade, slowly pulled himself from the warm car. In dark jeans, brown boots and a thick gray sweater, he looked more like a factory foreman than a Brooklyn-born priest. He wore no clerical collar, just a necklace of pendants with images of the Virgin Mary and Christ on the cross.

Inside the prison’s main building, Coogan tossed his keys onto the counter, and the guard on duty shook himself awake. “Buenos días, Padre,” the guard said, placing the keys on a hook as Coogan, 60, walked through a metal detector that failed to register his large silver belt buckle. “Buenos días,” Coogan said. He headed up a flight of stairs and down an empty hallway toward a thick steel door that opened into the general prison population. A heavyset guard let Coogan in, and with the morning chill aggravating an old running injury, he marched to the chapel just off the prison’s central plaza. A few minutes later, he was at the altar for the 7:40 a.m. Mass.

As usual, only a dozen or so prisoners showed up. Most of the 700 inmates — murderers, rapists, thieves, drug dealers and the innocent among them — were heading to work in one of the prison’s factories or carpentry shops. A crew of musclebound Zetas — Mexico’s most feared criminal syndicate, which runs the Cereso........

[Moose4]

And if we don’t start getting rid of illegal Mexicans and seal our border, even more of this will be coming here. Not that it isn’t already, I guess.

But our politicians of both parties would rather just bring this “diversity” to our country.

}:-)4

[Sergio]

bkmk