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  The next Saturday, which happened to be Holy Saturday, a lady in the prayer group who had no idea about the consecration says to me, “Here, Jim,” and gives me this little orange book called, Preparation for Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary According to St. Louis de Montfort, a thirty-three-day preparation for consecration to Our Lady. “That’s really remarkable,” I says. “This is just what I needed.” The front of the book had a little calendar listing a few days in the year when you could start the consecration, and the next date was the very next day, March 26, Easter Sunday. Really pumped, I started the thirty-three days of prayer on Easter and was consecrated on April 28th, the Feast Day of St. Louis de Montfort. I figured God was workin’ overtime.

  Now I had to live this consecration because on the last day of preparation, my penance from Fr. Hewett was: “Live the consecration for the rest of your life.” There was no turning back. I had to trust in Our Lady because I really didn’t feel like I was worthy to be one of hers, let alone anything of hers; but I wanted it so bad. Believe me, I was havin’ a rough time being good and still had to go to Confession every time I turned around, but I would do the little things that I could to please Our Lady. When I was ready to run my mouth at somebody, I’d let her have my mouth; and she wouldn’t do that stuff, so automatically I’d clam up. If one of the women in the prison was walkin’ by, and I was lookin’ at her too hard, I gave Our Lady my eyes. If I didn’t look at her with love, I mean a real love—of her soul and stuff, I wouldn’t look at her.

  This was a gift from God ‘cause I didn’t even know how to love, but I was excited to do things for Mary since she was so wonderful. And then things started to happen around me. I started to go up to guys and say, “Hey, there’s a few of us gettin’ together to have this prayer group, and we’re gonna live according to these messages of Medjugorje,” and I’d toss them one of the Wayne Weible newsletters. But there wasn’t no “few” of “us.” There was just me. I thought maybe people would come if I added numbers. Good thing they didn’t ask me who.

  I went to the priest and said, “Hey Father, how about if we get a prayer group together and start livin’ these messages of Medjugorje?”

  He said, “Jim, forget it. I’ve been tryin’ to get a prayer group going for eight years and couldn’t do it. The institution isn’t going to give you a room, and even if they did, I’d have to be there, and I can’t with five prisons to go to. Besides that, nobody wants it.”

  “Well, I’m gonna do it anyway,” I said. “This has gotta be given out somehow.” I didn’t know how it was gonna happen, but I just believed that we should be payin’ attention to these messages from heaven and livin’ ‘em. I convinced a friend, Vinny, to join me, and we were walkin’ around one day prayin’ the Rosary when he says, “Why don’t we go up to the school? I know the cop that’s workin’ there, and we’ll ask him for a room.”

  I says, “Nah. I don’t want to ask him nothin’.” I mighta been converted, but I was still a respectable convict. I wasn’t gonna talk to no cops. Well, somehow I end up face-to-face with this cop, askin’ him for a room.

  “A room for what?” he says.

  “So we can have a Rosary group.” I felt so un-masculine sayin’ that, so I made sure I threw in some attitude. When he asked when we wanted the room, I clenched my teeth lookin’ pretty severe: “Every night.”

  Well, that cop turned out to be a Godsend. He gave us a room whenever it was available, and me and Vinny went in, and we prayed a fifteen-decade Rosary with the meditations according to St. Louis de Montfort. At the end, we said three Hail Mary’s in thanksgiving for the room and to praise and glorify the Blessed Trinity in Our Lady’s honor. Even on days when we didn’t get the room and we was prayin’ out in the cold or rain, or whatever the weather, we would say three Hail Mary’s and thank her for the room as though we had it.

  Within the week, we had seven guys in the room every day, and within a couple weeks, there was twelve to fourteen guys there—every day. Now, these guys weren’t afraid of nobody. They could walk anywhere in the prison. They was dangerous, ya know: gangsters, bikers, drug dealers (not the penny ante kind)—knock-around guys, real respectable convicts.

  Miracles started happenin’ ‘cause of our prayer group. We’d pray one mystery of the Rosary, read the daily Mass readings, and I was learnin’ this consecration according to St. Louis, so I’d say, “Give it all to Our Lady, and she’ll take care of all the intentions of your families, of your heart, and everything.” But the guys didn’t know about this yet, and no matter how many Hail Mary’s and how many decades of the Rosary we said for her intentions, they wanted to pray for their intentions, so this developed into a list for the sick.

  More knock-around guys found out we were sayin’ the Rosary and would come up and say, “Hey, my kid’s sick. Put him on your list, and pray for him, will ya?” One of the guys, a big-time drug dealer from Colombia, had a son born with a hole in his heart, and it couldn’t be operated on ‘til he was two years old, so this dad asked one of the guys in the prayer group, “Pray for my son, for his operation in six months.” As we went along, we said a healing prayer for him, and when the time came for the little guy’s operation, they did some pre-operation heart tests on him, and well, he didn’t have no more hole in his heart.

  We had a pretty tight group. Some of the guys started goin’ to Confession. Others were scared, especially to confess things they didn’t get caught for because they figured the priest was in with the state. I used to tell them, “No, he’s not. I confessed stuff I never got caught for, and he ain’t said nothin’, and I ain’t got no new charges on me.” We had serious crimes on our jackets. Some of us had unconfessed murders. Ever seen one of them legal pads? We’d make lists four or five pages long with sins on every line and three- and four-digit numbers in front of them. That’s how serious we were about makin’ a Confession and goin’ forward in life. We started to have First Saturday devotions, and people started goin’ to church who hadn’t gone in a long time.

  We weren’t holy men, and prison is not a holy place; but healings kept happenin’ when we prayed. Our Lady was showin’ us, “You’re all a bunch of mess-ups; but see, I love you, because you’re trying.” That’s the way we took it. And when graces came down, we just wanted to do more and more.

  In my reading on Medjugorje, I learned how Mary was teachin’ the six visionaries about all kinds of things, bringin’ ‘em along a way of holiness. To me, this was the best form of rehabilitation or habilitation I’d ever heard of. I’ve been in drug programs, alcohol programs, educational programs, and to me, there isn’t anything better than Mary’s school ‘cause you have to stand before somebody you can’t lie to. I found that out when God showed me my choices. You can’t lie to someone who knows everything. If I go to some kind of group thing, I can just lie to everybody ‘cause my ego is gonna get in the way. So I think goin’ to God is the best rehab, and Our Lady was teachin’ us in such a tender and loving way. She wanted us to look at God, and she made us want to be loved by her. Somethin’ about her way just filled me.

  The August before I got outta prison, I was sittin’ on my bed, lookin’ inside my locker, and noticed a book I hadn’t touched, called The Woman. It had a picture of Our Lady standin’ on the moon, so I opened it up to a part where it talked about this priest in France, in 1830, who was sayin’ Mass and was really discouraged because there was only about ten people there. During the consecration, he heard a voice say, “Consecrate this parish to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” He figured it was his imagination, so he shook it off. Well after Mass, he heard it again distinctly, “Consecrate this parish to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” So he announced that he was gonna consecrate the parish, and then a big number, like 400 people, showed up.

  I said, “Wow, just imagine if we consecrated the prison. Maybe everybody would start prayin’.” So I went to the priest and said, “Father, how about if we consecrate the prison on the Feast of the Assumption comin’
up August 15th?” He agreed, and so I wrote one up. I consecrated everybody in that prison: the minimum unit, bayside unit, bayside prison, phase one, phase two—all five prisons, everybody who worked there, everybody who visited there, anyone who brought delivery stuff there, everybody that brought the mail, anybody who drove by, flew over, or came within the vicinity got consecrated on the Feast of Mary’s Assumption into heaven.

  On the first Friday of November, I came out of one of the minimum units where I was stayin’ since I was gettin’ out in December, 1990. I’d gotten in the habit of thankin’ him every day so I wouldn’t rebel against his divine providence. I used to complain about the cold weather comin’ up from Florida through Tennessee to New Jersey; but he allows the weather, he allows the mosquito bite, he allows the key to break off in the door so that we can glorify him.

  Well, this one beautiful day, I wanted to praise God, so I walked out, looked up, and said, “Bless you, Father, for your perfection. Thank you for the joy you put in my heart.” And in the beautiful blue sky, I saw this one cloud veiling the whole prison complex in the shape of a perfect circle, and inside the circle was blue sky and a perfect dove, like someone had airbrushed it. Around the perimeter of the circle were lines extending outward, equally spaced, like a child would draw the sun; but the figure in the middle wasn’t being disturbed. I thought, “Wow! Now that really is remarkable.” I’m not a fanatic, so I didn’t want to get all hyped up ‘cause everything is a sign that God exists: the flowers, each other—everything. But I couldn’t help but call out to these guys inside who were gonna say the Rosary. “Come on!” I said. “Check this out!”

  They walked out, looked up, and said, “That’s remarkable.” So we prayed the Rosary there, and for those thirty minutes, this dove inside a sun stayed above the prison complex. At the end of the Rosary, as we were sayin’ the St. Michael the Archangel prayer, it started breaking up and disappearing.

  The next day, I walked to the main prison where we were havin’ a First Saturday devotion with the Sacrament of Reconciliation. There was a gang of us now, about twenty-five regulars plus others who were comin’ and goin’. Some of these people in the Rosary group were makin’ weekly confessions and stuff, and each week you’d catch six-to-ten different guys standin’ outside the confessional. While waitin’ in line to confess, I started tellin’ this one guy what I seen and when I seen it. Three of them looked back at me, and one says, “You were late!” Then they tell me, “A half hour before the dove of the Holy Spirit showed up, there was a perfect heart in the sky right above the prison. Then the heart blossomed out and made the wings of the dove, which looked airbrushed.” If I could mistake that as anything other than gratitude from Our Lady, then I’d be blind.

  Nowadays, I’m out of prison, and I’ve been on the outside for many years. Even on this side of those prison walls, it ain’t easy tryin’ to live a holy life. My memories, my sins, are always with me, and every temptation is right there. To stay safe, I’d have to live in a container someplace. But in his mercy, God has given me a saving grace: a faith-filled wife who has stayed by my side through my greatest joys and my darkest hours. And I know if I cling to the daily love and devotion to Our Lady that I have, and I just concentrate on lookin’ at her, I’ll do all right.

  I still hear from some of the guys from Southern State Prison, and many of them are leading good, Catholic lives in their new freedom. I got word that the prayer group is still thriving at the prison, and Medjugorje is still bearing good fruit there. The inmates sometimes watch a video someone gave them of my testimony at a Medjugorje conference. They pray for me and consider me a brother. Some of the guys in prison will continue to go to church and say the Rosary every day, and some of ‘em will fall away. But the thing is we’re strugglin’. We’re tryin’. Before, there was no tryin’.

  While I ain’t never takin’ lightly the gift God gave me in Tennessee, I come to realize that his greatest miracle is the forgiveness of my sins. That incredible mercy is what keeps me livin’ and praisin’ him another day. Fr. Hewett once told me that a saint is a sinner who keeps gettin’ up. That’s what I cling to, the fact that we can always pick up and start again. We can be forgiven—everything. And that’s real freedom.

  FOUR

  FATHER PAUL CAPORALI

  After Our Lady’s Heart

  I WAS BLESSED FROM THE BEGINNING with signs of intimacy with Mary. As I awoke to life in a small, industrial town in Italy, called Terni, sixty miles outside of Rome, I noticed that the person closest to me was my paternal grandmother, Assunta, which means “Assumption.” She was available twenty-four hours a day to keep an eye on me, while my mother did chores. Every moment of her life, she held the rosary in her hands, even when she was eating. I loved to come down with tonsillitis because I got to skip school and lie tucked in bed. Grandma would sit by my side, telling me inspiring stories about Jesus and Mary, which brought to life the painting of the Madonna and Child by Carlo Dolci that hung above my crib and then my bed.

  I had a beautiful mother, too. As the oldest of ten children, she helped care for her siblings, and when she was finally ready to marry and leave the nest, her mother died, so she entered into marriage as the parent of her littlest sister, who was only three years old. Only many years later, when I was seven and my sister was eleven, did she say to me, “I’m your aunt.”

  “Eek!” Despite that horrifying revelation, which demoted me from big man of the family to little nephew, I loved my “sister,” Letizia, very much. We played together often and were quite close. She eventually married and gave birth to a precious baby girl, Rosanna. I also enjoyed my two brothers: Giancarlo, two years younger than I, and Alberto, who came along ten years after me. We were a closely knit family, with my mother taking care of the home, and my father working as an automatic weapons inspector—the consequences of his job never dawning on us. He was often absent from the town, testing machine guns assigned to army border control stations.

  To explain the atmosphere of those times, when we went to see the new black and white movies, just a few times a year, Mamma used to advise, “When they kiss, lower your eyes.” That was a lovely thing. No media was in the home to distract us or tempt us. No such thing as television existed. The atmosphere in which I grew up was happy, serene, secure, affectionate, disciplined, and loving. The word divorce did not exist in the old country. The family was everything. It was our world.

  In Terni, our Catholic religion lived in the streets, not just in churches and homes. Little Marian shrines were scattered on roadsides all over town. Passing them by, I gave the salutation, “Ti saluto madre Maria. Salutami Jesu’ da parte mia.” (“I greet you, mother Mary. Greet Jesus for me.”) a local tradition practiced by most everyone. In May, the month of Mary, the pastor of our parish led an evening Marian procession throughout the whole town. In this festive atmosphere of praise and song, I held my candle among a sea of lights, my heart almost bursting with effusive joy. Also in May, a big, beautiful statue of Mary Help of Christians, with a crown, a scepter, and the baby Jesus in her arms, towered above the main altar of the parish. She was the first Madonna I met, an image which came to St. John Bosco in a prophetic dream and which stirred my affection for my heavenly Mother who always felt so close.

  From age seven to nineteen, I was part of the parish boys club, the “Oratorio,” which means “place of prayer,” run by the Salesian order of priests, founded by St. Don Bosco. To organize the hundreds of boys, the priests grouped us by age and town section, and assigned me to the only group among dozens with a Marian name: The Immaculate Conception. Every Saturday and Sunday, I played games, attended catechism classes, and prayed in the chapel, alongside two or three hundred kids.

  When I was fifteen, my father, already an old-timer at stage acting, initiated me into the art by inviting me to join the Oratorio’s drama club. I was immediately assigned a small role and did well, so I continued acting in the club’s weekly productions held at the parish theater and bec
ame one of their top comedians. Being a bit of a rascal, I ad-libbed the lead role in many comedies, sometimes barely reading the script. When dramas were performed, the director encouraged me to come on stage in between acts to tell jokes and funny stories. With no TV and few movies around, the whole parish gathered for the entertainment.

  One of my chosen subjects was the imitation of our saintly sacristan, ninety-seven-year-old Ciriaco—a toothless man, almost deaf and almost blind, but enormously devoted to the Church. He couldn’t hear himself, so he always spoke his mind aloud. I would imitate his daily, 3 o’clock habit of walking through the Stations of the Cross, making loud comments when he missed some of the stations—“Oops, Lord, where did you go?” Before I stepped on stage, people clapped in anticipation saying, “Paolo! Paolo!” I was happy, thrilled to make them laugh.

  At the end of every show, the actors would mix with “the public”—in other words, parishioners, friends, and neighbors. We’d shake hands and welcome a little vainglory, collecting comments and compliments. Two frequent admirers became close to me: my best friend’s sister, Mary, who later became a nun, and her friend Lea, who caught my eye. “Oooh, she’s nice!” I started thinking to myself.

  At age sixteen or seventeen, I asked the director of the Salesian community and the pastor of my church to be my spiritual director. One day, while I was bringing leaflets about a First Friday devotion to families in my neighborhood, he gave me a book of prayers and readings in preparation for First Fridays. In that book, I read accounts of Jesus’s mystical life. When I read of his sadness over the rejection he received from the many people he loved, his pain touched my heart so deeply that I began to weep. In that moment, I most likely experienced what Protestant Christians call “the Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” or being “born again.” Jesus became my very close friend. My apostolic drive to bring others to him increased in fervor, and friends noticed the change in me. I began to serve Mass and found myself in church with my grandmother, more than just on Sundays—times I cherish greatly since she died shortly thereafter. Occasionally, when pausing to stand before a beautiful church statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, I would dialogue with him heart to heart. It was abundantly clear. I had fallen fervently in love.