Spiritual awakening

Author’s Note. This article is a sequel to a previous StarGazer column titled “Hoodlum Priest” that was inspired by true events — the story of a prelate who smacked a policeman to get himself jailed because he had an obsession to rouse a spiritual awakening in lost prisoners. (Read the author’s blog version = https://eastwindjournals.com/2024/03/24/the-hoodlum-priest-49/.)

The same Fr. Vincent Perry, the hoodlum priest who gained fame as a notorious rebel priest, was assigned to death row at the Michigan State Penitentiary “to prepare the convicts for the after life,” as he described it.

His mind was churning, thinking of creative ways to talk to the prisoners who were so depressed and numb because they were about to die. He rejected the idea of talking to them one-on-one because he felt that would probably make them more depressed.

He heard about the death row priest at the Vermont State Penitentiary who was strangled by the quietest of death row prisoners, who said in reply to why he killed him, “He was rubbing salt on my wounds by talking about salvation and religion. That was trash talk. I am a devout atheist. Anyway, I am a dead man. One more killing won’t make me deader.” His statement spread across many newspapers.

Later, Fr. Perry found out that the prisoner committed suicide, a fellow death row inmate revealed, by convincing a prison guard who pitied him in his agony to help him do it. State penitentiaries have strict protocols to avoid suicide among death row inmates by denying them the tools to kill themselves. Even plastic forks and thin nylon rope were banned.

But the convict came up with an ingenious way to commit suicide, painless, silent, by taking rat poison and downing it with a bottle of expensive Blue Label cognac he obtained from a prison guard who pitied him. The guard was instantly fired, but he did not care. He said, “Depression is contagious. I wanted out, but before I did, I helped someone.”

So, Fr. Perry abandoned the idea of talking one on one or even as a group to the death row inmates — it somehow triggered despair. Instead, he got permission from the liberal warden to have a “wild party” for the death row inmates. A tall order, but the warden agreed. This was in keeping with the death row tenet: “If you gotta go, you gotta go with fireworks, not doom and gloom.” The condition was 30 guards would be on standby for the 18 death row inmates. The wild party protocol was later made a weekly affair.

The parties were so wild that the guards had a greater time than the inmates. They smuggled in the best wines from a Chinese millionaire, who also donated a huge roast pig each time on behalf of his Chinese friend on death row. They were all willing to die of a heart attack rather than by injection, even the guards.

This was all done in secret until a guard who did not drink and hated the alcohol flooding the prison finally spilled the beans. He was mauled to a pulp, of course. And the wild parties continued because the warden discerned an inherent wisdom in it.

Whenever one was scheduled for the chair, they would have the wildest party ever. In a sense, they were all looking forward to dying.

Fr. Perry, however, told them there would be no wild parties if they did not attend Holy Mass every day. He would tell touching stories about his life as a hoodlum priest, and they would all laugh, then silence, and many would start weeping quietly.

In the end, Fr. Perry prepared them to accept the after-life in an easy quiet way. They would all embrace each other whenever an inmate was scheduled for the chair. There was still the fear of death and the pain of goodbye but their camaraderie was the healing balm.

A journalist wrote about Fr. Perry’s experience on death row, and the news spread like wildfire.

He established a model for how death row inmates should face death. There were reforms in many state penitentiaries, following the “Fr. Perry Death Row Model.” Even terminal cancer patients began adopting the Perry Model.