The New Yorker:

Sisters from a convent outside Waco have repeatedly visited the prisoners—and even made them affiliates of their order. The story of a powerful spiritual alliance.

By Lawrence Wright

Gatesville, Texas, a prison town a hundred miles north of Austin, has six correctional facilities, five of them housing female inmates. On the widely spaced campuses, each surrounded by towering chain-link fences topped with razor wire, women in white uniforms can be seen mowing grass. In the spring, nearby pastures fill with wildflowers unseen by the inmates. On a nice day, you might hear the guards taking target practice.

The Patrick L. O’Daniel Unit is a single-story red brick complex set on a hundred acres. It used to be called Mountain View, for the modest green hills on the horizon. In the fall of 2014, Ronnie Lastovica, a Catholic deacon, assisted in a Mass for the prison’s general population. Afterward, an officer told him, “There’s an offender on death row who would like to take Communion.”

The officer led Ronnie to a building that contains an area where suicidal or mentally ill inmates are kept under observation. There are also two wings housing all the condemned women of Texas.

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