Despite having been baptized, Silva did not remain connected to the Church. As an adult, he lived in Argentina for a few years and experienced another moment he will never forget.
“I went to the cathedral with my sister, who lived in Buenos Aires, and with her husband’s family, and we attended Mass.” The celebrant was none other than the then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. “In other words, I had the privilege of being with the pope! And from then on, I really liked him,” he said.
Late catechesis and the right opportunity
Years later, living with another sister in Alicante, Spain, Silva was going through “a particularly difficult phase” and, desperate, he decided to pray.
“I was walking down the street and asked God to help me, to give me a sign. The next moment, I look down at the floor and see a folded magazine. I open it and it was an issue of Awake! by Jehovah’s Witnesses. So I looked up at the sky and said to God, ‘What? That fast?'”
Pedro laughed as he shared his story, fondly recalling how he went out to the street where some members of Jehovah’s Witnesses used to be and spoke to them. “From then on, every week they came to the house to teach me about the Bible. It was there that I deepened my relationship with God.”
But when he moved to Vigo, another Spanish city, to work in a restaurant, he “didn’t have time for anything,” and his connection to religion was lost.
A new complicated phase in life marked by some mistakes, eventually brought him back to Portugal, condemned to a six-year sentence at the Coimbra Prison. It was there that he learned that World Youth Day would take place in Lisbon, though he was still far from imagining he would ever see the pope he loved again. But when the challenge of the confessionals came and he was one of the five chosen to join the team that would build them, Silva felt that it was another sign from God, and a new opportunity that appeared when he needed it most.
“I was very happy and grateful, and it makes me proud to know that in those confessionals there is a part of me and of my companions,” he said.
The fact that it was a better paid job than usual in prison was extra motivation.
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“When I found out that we were going to receive ten euros a day, I immediately thought that it would be a good help so that, when I was released, I wouldn’t be so dependent on my family,” he said.
Made from recycled wood, supplied by the JMJ Lisboa 2023 Foundation, the confessionals have a simple structure, which Silva, already used to making more complex pieces in the prison’s carpentry shop, found easy to execute.
“And since we have a colleague on the team who is a real carpenter, we even improved what had been designed,” he points out with pride, while showing one of the confessionals already completed and assembled in the workshop, so that it can be photographed.
More prisoners at WYD?
Orlando Carvalho, who has been running the Coimbra Prison for ten years, is also proud. “It is part of the tradition of this establishment to operate the workshop sector, with 13 different areas, including joinery and carpentry, so we immediately said yes when asked if we would like to participate in the construction of the confessionals,” he points out.
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