More priests needed in jails, says bishop

More priests are needed to say Mass in jails and attend to the spiritual needs of detainees, said military bishop Oscar Florencio of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ Episcopal Commission on Prison Pastoral Care, who called on his fellow prelates to assign priests to the prison ministry. “They know their priests so they know who has the interest and the heart to be of service to the prison ministry,” he told reporters in an interview on Monday for the start of the Prison Awareness Week. There are about 182,000 inmates in the country today, some 75 percent of whom are detention prisoners staying in the city, municipal and provincial jails.