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Nun, 93, preaches the gospel behind razor-wire fences

MUSKEGON, Mich.-Sister Elizabeth Barilla rolled in a wheelchair past inmates playing basketball and raking spacious prison grounds. A pleasant breeze blew across what looked like a small-college campus, except for prisoners’ blue togs and the sun glinting off razor wire at the Muskegon Correctional Facility. Barilla was impatient to arrive for her monthly 6:15 p.m. class teaching the Bible and Catholic doctrine to a handful of prison’s 1,300 male inmates. She could have walked to her classroom with a cane, but at age 93, Sister Barilla gladly accepted the ride. At a security checkpoint, she was patted down and held onto her veil. “They make me take it off because they think I’m hiding something,” she said with a chuckle. After almost two years of teaching there, the Dominican nun knows the drill well. The former Catholic school teacher puts up with security hassles so she can bring the gospel to convicts.

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