We are a Christian organisation which grew out of a group of people who found themselves imprisoned in a foreign country – in Peru – and realized that God was reaching out to them even in the darkness and hopelessness of prison. After they were released, they teamed up with Christians from different churches in Lima who shared the same vision to support prisoners and ex-prisoners, irrespective of why they are in this situation, race, age, gender, nationality, religion or worldview.
FPF hence was started in December of 1985 by Gary and Ronald, who became Christians while in the notorious Lurigancho prison with over 7,000 inmates at the time one of the worst and most violent in the world, on the outskirts of Lima in Peru (see “Gary & Ronald” page for more details). When they were released on parole that year, they went back and a group from the Church of the Good Shepherd and other international churches in Lima was organized to visit these fellow prisoners every week. Eventually in 1987 they travelled on to Rio de Janeiro and São Paolo in Brazil and also to Frankfurt, Germany to continue this work.
We are also a fellowship of foreign prisoners which keeps in touch with each other over the years and across different countries (see more details under the “Fellowship” page).
We started to work in Brazil in 1987 as mentioned above and John Sapieha has continued by supporting such prisoners in Rio de Janeiro since 1991 by regular visits. He was joined by Richard Cleary and they have good links with foreign consulates, local churches and the prison system. They also co-ordinate a group which provides ex-prisoners awaiting repatriation from Brazil with accommodation and other help. Most of them have very limited financial support. This is a difficult time for them as they are in a sort of limbo where they are not allowed to work, still have legal hurdles to pass and no means of paying their fare back home.
Our scope widened to include support for street-children and youth offenders in São Paolo back in the early 1990s, hence we eventually registered in 1998 as a charity in the UK under the name of “Cornerstone Ministries International”