by Lydia Laythe |
Reverend David Link has been a husband, dean, university president and priest. After Link lost his wife to cancer, he served as dean of Notre Dame Law School, co-founded the South Bend Center for the Homeless and became the first president of the University of Notre Dame, Australia. Now, Link serves as a prison chaplain at Indiana State Penitentiary.
Link visited UP on Wednesday, Sept. 30 for the University's annual Red Mass. The empathy and compassion Link has for the inmates he works with now is obvious.
"These aren't bad guys," Link informed the gathering of some of Portland's most notable legal minds.
Link laughed as he recalled watching the big, burly inmates work diligently to crochet hats and scarves for newborns they would never meet. He urged attendants to approach criminal justice through a healing, rehabilitative lens rather than a punitive one.
"These (men) didn't fall through the cracks," Link said. "They were born in the cracks."
Lydia Laythe is the opinions editor for The Beacon. She can be reached at laythe16@up.edu.
