Pace e Bene

Franciscan priest and Pace e Bene staff member Friar Louis Vitale, 77, began serving a six-month prison sentence on Monday, January 25 for nonviolent, prayerful protest calling for closure of the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Georgia. On February 25 he was transferred from Crisp County Jail in Cordele, Georgia (where he spent his first  month after being processed briefly at Muscogee County Jail), to the US Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. He has since been moved to Oklahoma City.  Click here to see the series of letters from Louie we at Pace e Bene have received or gathered.

A Journey through Space and Time

As I have mentioned previously, Rick – my Primitive Baptist friend and cellmate for three weeks in Atlanta – sensed my anxiety about my future “destination.”  Having finished my 2006 sentence at Crisp County Jail in Cordele, Georgia, I was content to remain there my entire six months.  But after my sudden departure from Crisp County on February 25 (just the one month wait predicted by the US marshal in Columbus), I anticipated my next destination. 

One of the marshals on our bus told me I was destined for Lompoc, California Federal Corrections Institution.  This seemed almost too ideal.  California is my home.  Not only that, I will be closer to friends and family, some of whom might be able to visit.  But I could not really quite believe it – as in 2002 when I was assigned to Nellis Camp on Nellis Air Force Base, adjacent to the Nevada Test Site and just north of Las Vegas, where I lived and ministered for over a decade.  I kept anticipating that this would not really happen – that I would somehow so botch up my chance.

Rick kept saying to me, “Let go, let God.”  The jail administrator in Atlanta reconfirmed that I would be going to Lompoc; he said that I would fly out in three weeks.  Three weeks to the day I was called out a t 3 a.m. and was off to the airport.  Yes, it seemed that it was happening.

We landed at Victorville in the Mojave Desert of eastern California.  But I was not put on a bus to the Victorville prison.  Instead, I was escorted to a bus headed for Lompoc.

My spirit soared in gratitude approaching Old Mission Santa Barbara, where I spent four years becoming a Franciscan and making my life-long commitment

Yes – “Let God do it” works.

After a lengthy wait we really did leave for the California coast.  It was a beautiful ride.  In my Las Vegas days I had learned to love the desert. The desert was where the Desert Mothers and Fathers in the fourth century C.E. found God. We are reminded by Thomas Merton in his book Thoughts in Solitude, that the Nevada desert has been transformed from a place of profound spirituality to the home to casinos and nuclear testing.  The Nevada Test Site, with its 928 nuclear detonations, is the most bombed place on the planet.

But we are aware, as confirmed by Native spiritual leaders such as Corbin Harney of the Western Shoshone Nation, that the desert is still where the Creator’s presence is strongly felt. 

I rejoiced in that presence as my spirit expanded – even as I was cuffed and chained on the bus.  It was a perfect day for travel.  As we passed Pear Blossom Highway – and Arroyo Sierro Highway, passed the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains, and through Santa Clarita, passed the soaring roller coasters of Magi Mountain theme park (God does a better job with mountains), and cut through the citrus groves and avocado ranches of Fillmore and Santa Paula and Ventura (formerly San Buenaventura).  Finally, there it is – the sparkling Pacific.  Even the gigantic multiplex offshore oil rigs – with their constant threat to a once-pristine coast and bird refuges – could not blot out the gorgeous expanse of Sister water as we journeyed up to Santa Barbara. 

My spirit soared in gratitude as if I were reliving my journey from the US Air Force (recalled by our US Fed Ex airplane from Victorville AFB) and now approaching Old Mission Santa Barbara, where I spent four years becoming a Franciscan and making my life-long commitment of, now, 50 years. 

With that formation I went from life as a carefree student and then an Air Force “fly boy” to wearing the robes of the Poverello – The Poor One – Saint Francis.  But not simply wearing the robes.  I sought to walk the way of his conversion from “this world” and its pursuits – to being immersed in the intense search for God and an ardent pursuit of peace.

This all flooded into my soul once again as we saw Brother Sun dropping toward the horizon line of the ocean — seemingly right in front of our destination for the next several months (years for most): the Federal Correctional Center at Lompoc.  (This reminded me of my very first jail stay in Tonopah, Nevada for protesting at the Nevada Test Site in the early 1980s.  On the way, we had a dinner stop in Reno.  I had a farewell spaghetti dinner.  As we drove out of Reno an awesome rainbow arched across the mountains to the town of Tonopah.  Thank you, God.)

Was all of this pre-ordained?  My Primitive Baptist cellmate Rick was stressing on letting God do it, as his denominational Baptist roots insist: God has predestined us to all that happens in our lives.

I have always insisted that the hardest part of jail time (for me, that means the most anxiety-producing time) is arrival, processing, being stripped again, losing all your clothes, possessions, and being seemingly randomly placed in new quarters.  Most of our façades and security blankets are stripped away. 

As I went to my new quarters I realized that I was separated from the new friend I ad made on the bus trip.  He had assured me they would watch out for the “old man.”  I also noticed that I had left behind my one set of reading glasses. I saw no sign of packet of “legal papers,” which included my list of phone numbers and addresses.

The challenge for negotiating for a lower bunk (to protect my 77-year-old “weak bones”); trying to fend my way through 120 new bedmates to the bathroom and back to the right bunk; carrying armfuls of new regulations I have to absorb; tips on how to make the bed right; being made aware that the commissary (my source for warm clothes, new reading glasses, stamps and writing materials) had just closed for two weeks!

So I did wake up very early with some heightened anxiety (albeit nothing like the panic attacks I had for a spell when I was minister of our Franciscan province some 20 years ago).  As I lay in bed I used some of the practices developed by the group Capacitar and taught me by my good friend Sr. Mary Litell (finger holds; tapping).  They helped me calm down.

An assurance was given to me as I went into the new and somewhat intimidating environment.  (Though I was not comforted by the high fences and massive rolls of concertina wire surrounding us.  I was aware that this protected us from intruders but primarily it was designed to keep us in.  Fences are the difference between federal prison camps that are unfenced and higher security facilities.  Lompoc is a middle level facility.)  I was assured that I would find the inmates there very thoughtful and helpful.

As I rose the next morning I suddenly found the little pen I had lost.  So I could take notes.  I was guided to breakfast by well-wishing new companions.  I was given shower flip-flops (a must wear item in such institutions), a cup, hygiene items (soap, shampoo, razor, shaving cream, toothbrush and paste, toilet paper – you carry your own roll), clothing. 

We were escorted to the laundry, where we were issued four sets of new underwear (new) and khaki shirts and pants, a brand new outdoor jacket (warm).  Then a good breakfast with guidance to the “No Flesh” line for vegetarians and other diets (kosher, heart healthy, diabetic). 

My good humor soared – and the unaccustomed caffeine helped.  I visited the chapel and met the chaplain.  Fr. Frank Tinojero – who had been chaplain, friend and my director as a chapel orderly at Nellis Camp — has recently left the position here.  The new chaplain is Greg Nelson, a Lutheran minister who knew of me at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where he studied and where I have taught.  We hit it off very well.  He also is happy to have me assist in the chapel.  This is a job at I had at Nellis in 2002, an assignment that brought me peace and joy, even as – with heavy hearts, we watched the US Air Force planes leave for the Middle East and the US war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today is Palm Sunday (now known as Passion Sunday).  We Catholics do still get palms and read the Passion.  It is a powerful liturgy.  Since Fr. Frank left they have not had a Catholic priest to say mass.  Unfortunately, as an inmate I am not permitted to do this. 

Today, though, a Capuchin Franciscan came to celebrate Holy week with us.  It was a wonderful bilingual service.  We also had a beautiful day ands one of the chapel aides gave me a tour of the sacred garden and loaned me a radio to hear news, and brought me a chocolate bar.  God is good – and so are God’s incarnations in our midst.  I have a refreshing happiness. Maybe it is the nearness of the Pacific Ocean.

Meanwhile, Rev. Nelson used my story [in his sermon] to tell of the hidden presence of another Franciscan apostle to the poor and for peace arrived in their midst.

Yes, if we let God do it, the results are amazing.  The journey continues.  Praise God.