Beautiful Assunta Hall is located in the Vincentian Compound on the Rione Sanità, one of the oldest and most fascinating neighborhoods of Naples. It is a place rich in history, art and culture, but also characterized by degradation, criminality and marginality. The Hall recently hosted a public meeting on the subject of prisons, justice, forgiveness and mercy, taking as a point of departure Father Vittorio Trani’s book, Come in cielo così sia in terra (As in Heaven, So Also on Earth), a new edition published by the Daughters of St. Paul. The book was a runner-up for the Michele Giordano Prize. Sharing the stage with Trani were authorities and volunteers from the prisons of Naples. The book presentation included abundant testimonies, anecdotes and reflections on a segment of humanity that lives above all in an attitude of eternal waiting, as Sr. Fausta Lazzari of the Sisters of the Poor Bergamo remarked, saying that countless prisoners are longing for a visit from someone or even just a simple greeting, an acknowledgment of their presence. They are waiting to be seen and forgiven.
Father Trani, who has been working for half a century with the incarcerated, proposed his idea for a more humane system of justice–one more inclusive and hopeful, in which the key to the prison gates should not be thrown away. He called for the need to educate the public on this subject so as to bring about change and restore faith in humanity to those who have lost and betrayed it. He explained that this is only way there will ever be an after different from the before for those imprisoned for their crimes and also for society as a whole.
