MESSAGE OF REDEMPTION FOR INMATES ON HOLY THURSDAY: From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The overcrowded chapel was sweltering, but Catholic Bishop Donald Wuerl had an utterly attentive audience as he prepared to wash the feet of inmates at the Allegheny County Jail.

He told them that Jesus had offered his life as ransom.

“Imagine if someone said, ‘I’ll serve your sentence,'” he told 100 male inmates in red prison uniforms.

“That is what Jesus did in his death for anything that any one of us would ever do.”

The jail chaplain had expected 75 inmates, prepared for 90 and had to bring in extra chairs. Wuerl has visited the jail many times and confirmed some of the inmates last year. …

The jail may be his favorite place to do confirmations. He recalled one year when the first inmate confirmed was so overwhelmed that he began to weep and then threw his arms around him.

The remaining confirmands thought the hug was part of the ritual, and did the same. It was, Wuerl recalled, “the only place I’ve been where everyone has hugged me.”

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Via Amy Welborn.