For three decades Margaret Wiseman has accompanied women and sometimes their unborn children in prison, seen God in the faces of convicted murderers, and deep inner growth in people she has heard rejected as “scum.”
The first lay woman Catholic chaplain at the Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre has witnessed fights, riots and heartbreak, but also goodness and transformation in the people she cares for.
For nearly 20 years she has also led a prison ministry at her Epping-Carlingford parish, with several loving parishioners on a roster to enter the maximum-security facility each Sunday for a communion service and morning tea.
“Every one of them is amazed when they get there and realise the women are human beings. They are just like me,” Margaret said.
“I had to come into prison to be able to say that. We all make mistakes, some more than others.”
Her husband Brian Wiseman also has a heart for the marginalised and provides support for the chaplaincy program—run by CatholicCare Sydney for the last 13 years—through their local St Vincent de Paul conference, where he is the treasurer.
The pair will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary this coming January, and have two children, five grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
Margaret was inspired by an adult education program run by Fr Tony Doherty and Sr Patricia (Patty) Faulkner to find a ministry she could throw herself into that would also bless her parish.
She originally volunteered for prison ministry at Long Bay but soon discovered it was women prisoners she had a desire and a gift to serve through pastoral care.
The first inmate she met at Silverwater was a young pregnant woman who asked for help purchasing things for the baby she was carrying.
“I later discovered that 17 years earlier, she’d been inside her mother’s womb in prison, and I realised that here was a generational problem,” Margaret said.
Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP recently honoured Margaret with the inaugural lifetime achievement award at an annual CatholicCare staff awards ceremony.
Reflecting on what drew her to the work, she said it was something she always wanted to do.
“Even as a young child, I was deeply concerned for the underdog. I wondered how anyone, child or adult, could cope with inner turmoil,” she said.
“I’m not sure what fostered that concern, perhaps it was things I heard on the news while growing up, but I was acutely aware of people becoming separated from family.
A trained spiritual director and facilitator of the Ignatian spiritual exercises, Margaret says she’s a much better chaplain for her formation in “attentive listening.”
“There are times when listening is all I can do, and I trust God when listening to someone who is really struggling,” she said.
“Sometimes I cry at work in silence. Having a family, I got into the habit of, when leaving the gate here at the prison I’d say to Jesus, ‘I’ve done all I can do here today, I give it back to you now. Help me to come back tomorrow and do more.’
“I never take anything home with me.
“Am I ever frightened when I meet murderers? No, not at all. I’ve looked into their eyes and seen the suffering face of Christ.
“I still hear terrible things said about some of these women on the news, but I see so much change in the women who come to the chapel, come to meditation, do programs with me.
“One inmate who will never be released told our chief executive officer from CatholicCare ‘I was never free on the outside, but after 20 years here I’m free on the inside, and I am so different.
“To people who hate prisoners, who think they are scum, I would say to them, come and see.”
Reproduced with permission from The Catholic Weekly, the news publication of the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney.
