Pope Leo puts focus on prisoners in first papal visit to a Spanish jail

Pope Leo, who has forcefully advocated for the rights of prisoners, visited one of Spain's largest prisons on Wednesday, urging the ​inmates to make amends for their crimes and commit to living ‌better lives.

Speaking to detainees at a penitentiary outside Barcelona, in the first visit of a pope to a Spanish prison, Leo said a person's past "does not condemn the future ​but rather offers the possibility of changing our decisions and choices".

Leo, ​the first U.S. pope, is on a week-long tour of Spain in ⁠which he has warned that escalating conflicts have pushed the world into a ​profound crisis and urged better treatment of migrants.

The centrepiece of the pope's visit to ​Barcelona, the second of three stops on the tour, will come later Wednesday, when he will inaugurate the newest tower of the Sagrada Familia, the modernist basilica designed by Antoni Gaudi ​that has become the world's tallest church.

The Brians 1 penitentiary, built in 1991 ​about 40 km (25 miles) outside Barcelona, currently houses around 1,000 inmates.

"It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I ‌haven’t ⁠been able to sleep a wink," said Montse Benavente, an inmate who delivered a testimony before the pope about how she had struggled with her faith and the damage she had done to her family with her actions.

The ​late Pope Francis also advocated for prisoners' rights and ​visited a ⁠facility in Rome just four days before his death as he was recovering from double pneumonia.

One of the prisoners at the Barcelona facility told El Mundo they were ⁠very ​grateful for Leo's visit. "No one remembers us," said ​the person, identified as Mayte. "It is very easy to forget someone who is in prison."

-Reuters