Prison chaplain

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From a convent to a classroom to a prison, Sister Zita Barron has dedicated her life to teaching, listening and helping those who need her.

Judgment is not a word Sister Zita Barron has much time for. At 79, she has only just retired from her chaplaincy work at one of Australia’s maximum-security prisons, but still takes time to visit the men she says are often forgotten on the outside. Almost every Tuesday, she leaves the comfort of her retirement village in Sydney’s Maroubra to enter a world most people wouldn’t even like to imagine, let alone experience. To many on the outside, Long Bay Correction Complex in Sydney’s Malabar is a frightening place filled with dangerous criminals. To Sister Zita, it’s a community filled with real people who need her. She greets them, talks to them, laughs with them, counsels and listens to them. It can be heartbreaking, it can be inspiring and it can sometimes take all the strength, faith and courage this one woman can muster.

6am: After she has showered and made her bed, Sister Zita starts her day in prayer as she has done ever since she became a nun at the age of 18. “I carry out what we call a Christian meditation, where I use a mantra to empty my mind of the material world,” she explains. “I ask for guidance at times to help me help the people inside the prison because sometimes I don’t know what I’m going to say or be able to do for them.”

7am: Sister Zita has breakfast of cereal and toast in the kitchen of her self-contained apartment and packs her lunch for her visit to the gaol. By 8.15am she’s on the road making the short journey from Maroubra to the next suburb of Malabar.

8.30am: Arriving at the Long Bay car park boom gate, Sister Zita shows her ID card, parks her car and walks into the prison, where she’s greeted by Corrective Services officers. She still remembers her first day at the prison seven years ago.

“I’d had no experience of gaols apart from one in my hometown of Cooma when I was a child, and I’d always rush past the gate in case anyone tried to grab me!” she laughs.
“I was like most people then and prejudged the fellows inside, but life has taught me not to judge people, so I honestly wasn’t afraid of what I’d find inside Long Bay.” Instead, Sister Zita says she was nervous about how the inmates would accept her.

“I wondered whether they’d even want to talk to me or if I’d be any help to them at all,” she smiles. To her relief, the welcome she received from the inmates was more than she could have expected. “Shortly after I started at Long Bay, a chaplain suggested I bring four sisters from the convent to the prison with me. We were taken to an area where the inmates were suffering from hepatitis C. A few of the men had made a beautiful morning tea for us and they honestly treated us like royalty,” she says.

As she enters the prison now, she sees the same things she has seen for those seven years. “In maximum security, it’s pretty stark inside those walls and it’s the same every day… Some guys have jobs and they’re called ‘sweepers’, but the rest walk up and down the yard and smoke or use the gym equipment,” she explains. Apart from saying hello, Sister Zita usually leaves it to the inmates to approach her. “I don’t go around preaching to them; that’s not what they need… I’m there if they need to talk,” she says. “Some want to tell me or ask me something and some don’t ever talk to me at all, but most will say, ‘Hello, Sister’.”  

She makes her way through the yard to the bakery or ‘Cor-Tex’ (sewing area) where she begins her closer interaction with the prisoners. Sister Zita brings rosary beads, holy cards and crosses for men who have requested them. “Sometimes an inmate and I will find a corner and pray together, particularly if they’re worried about a family member.” 

9.30am: Sister Zita heads to the chaplaincy office, where she greets her colleagues who also dedicate their lives to helping the people inside the prison walls. The chaplaincy is multi-denominational; working there full-time are Father Peter Carroll, a Catholic priest, Sister Pauline Stanton, the administrator of Chaplaincy NSW, Reverends Peter Baines and Ray Beckman, who are Anglican ministers, and Pastor Gary Ring, an Assembly of God minister. A Muslim imam also visits once a week as does a Buddhist lay chaplain, an Orthodox priest and a Jewish rabbi. “It’s a very positive environment to work in,” says Sister Zita.

10am: As a chaplain, Sister Zita usually has particular inmates she visits every week. She’ll meet them in the yard or in the chapel. “Some of these men have nobody else because their families and friends have lost contact with them,” she explains. “One chap has been there for thirty-two years, some are elderly men who’ve spent almost their entire lives behind a prison wall, so my visit is one more thing, I suppose, they have to look forward to… How can I leave them just because I’ve retired?”

It might be hard for many of us to believe, but Sister Zita finds it easy to not judge the inmates. “I don’t ask them what they’ve done,” she says firmly. “Some of them have made terrible mistakes and some have even done evil things, but it’s not my role to judge them. They’ve already been judged and punished and now they need something else.” That ‘something else’ can take many forms, and Sister Zita does her best to accommodate each person’s needs. “Sometimes they want me to contact a family member or lawyer; sometimes they want to tell me about something terrible that happened in their childhood, which they’ve never told anyone; sometimes they want to talk about what they did to be in prison; and sometimes they just want to chat about their lives or mine,” she says. 

Interested in the Long Bay inmates’ artwork?
There is an inmates’ art gallery at Long Bay, which is open to the public on Saturdays from 9.30am - 6.15pm and Sundays from 1.30pm - 5pm.

The artwork is for sale, with proceeds going back to the inmates and a small percentage going to the prison art department to purchase additional art supplies. For more information, call (02) 8304 2000.