By Rocio Granados - La Voz Catolica

MIAMI  | In recognition of its tireless pastoral work in detention centers, the Miami-Dade County Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has bestowed the 2025 Religious Organization of the Year award to the Archdiocese of Miami.

This award recognizes the Archdiocese of Miami’s decades of continuous service and spiritual presence in the county’s jails. Deacon Edgardo Farías, director of the Archdiocesan Prison Ministry, accepted the award on behalf of the archdiocese.

During the award presentation April 22, 2025, in Doral, at a breakfast attended by other local organizations, it was noted that since the founding of the Department of Corrections in the 1970s, the Archdiocese of Miami has consistently collaborated to provide pastoral care to those incarcerated. However, over the past 20 years, under the leadership of Deacon Farías, that prison ministry has taken on a new dimension.

“My job as director is to open doors. I am an ambassador, a representative, the face of the Archdiocese in all these jurisdictions,” said Deacon Farías, who works with other chaplains and the entire prison system to provide Catholic services in Miami-Dade County’s four prisons.

Upon receiving the award, Deacon Farías said he felt “happy, knowing that the Archdiocese is recognized for its work within the prisons.”

The Archdiocese of Miami’s Prison Ministry provides Catholic pastoral care, proclaiming the Word of God, and administering the Eucharist to approximately 18,000 incarcerated individuals in 30 facilities. These include federal and state prisons, county jails, juvenile detention centers, and immigration centers located in Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe counties.

Deacon Farías is the fourth director of the Archdiocesan Prison Ministry. For him, visiting prisons is “a vocation that my wife reaffirms and supports, and my daughter, too.” He began as a volunteer in 1998, visiting prisoners one day a week, on Fridays, alongside the late Msgr. Gilberto Fernández, who was Auxiliary Bishop of Miami at the time. In 2002, he was ordained a permanent deacon, and in 2006, he became director of the Prison Ministry, succeeding the previous director, Sammy Díaz.

He continued visiting prisons and celebrating Mass with Miami’s auxiliary bishops: Bishop Felipe Estévez, emeritus of St. Augustine; Bishop John Noonan, now of Orlando; and Bishop Enrique Delgado.

From those visits, he recalls Bishop Noonan “carrying a small wicker basket in a clear plastic bag with the hosts and the cruets of water and wine, all made of wood so they wouldn’t make any noise,” said Deacon Farías.

After almost 20 years as director of the Prison Ministry, his primary task remains recruiting, training and sending forth.

“Training is essential for people to learn to follow institutional rules and, secondly, to provide good service,” he added.

Deacon Farías highlighted that, in prisons, the Catholic population is 10 to 15 percent.

“It’s not many, but our job is to reach them,” he said, emphasizing collaboration with chaplains from other Christian denominations.

At the same time, there are not enough priests to celebrate Mass regularly, so the deacon is training laypeople to share the Word and administer Communion in the absence of a priest.

“Bishop Estévez once told me, ‘Edgardo, if you can’t find priests, do it with deacons. And if you can’t find deacons, do it with the laity,’” remembered Deacon Farías.

The number of volunteers decreased during the COVID pandemic but is growing again. There are about 300 volunteers, and spiritual retreats are held in federal and state prisons. There are charismatic groups, Cursillistas and Emmaus groups.

“In a women’s prison, there are five retreats each year, with priests, confessions and exposition of the Blessed Sacrament,” added the deacon.

The Prison Ministry also offers support to the families, guiding them when a loved one is about to serve a sentence in a federal prison and accompanying them throughout the process.

“We tell them, ‘Don’t worry, there are Catholic volunteers. We will be with you. I myself will come to visit you.’”

Still, more volunteers, more priests and more deacons are needed, Deacon Farías said.

Working with prisoners, he added, “is a calling. And God equips you, provides for you and trains you to respond to that calling.”

Although this is the first time the archdiocese has received this award, Deacon Farías has been honored with others. In 2015, he received the National Day of Prayer Appreciation Award from the Broward County sheriff in recognition of his dedication and community leadership.

In January 2025, the group Hermanos de la Calle (Brothers of the Street), a nonprofit organization in Miami that helps homeless people, presented Deacon Farías with a sculpture by Timothy P. Schmalz. The artwork symbolizes work with migrants and marginalized individuals and was given in recognition of “teaching us to see Christ in those deprived of liberty and being an example to all of us.”

Schmalz is also the creator of Angels Unawares, a sculpture installed in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican in 2019, which symbolizes the hospitality owed to all human beings, including strangers.