Mexico’s ‘prison angel’ shuns luxury for service

TIJUANA, Mexico

The cell at the end of the dark hallway barely fits a cot, a desk and a folding chair. This is home for Sister Antonia Brenner, an American nun who was raised in Beverly Hills but abandoned a life of privilege to live in a notorious Mexican jail.

Her neighbors are no longer Hollywood stars, but murderers, drug runners and human smugglers. They know her as “angel de la carcel” (the prison angel).

Sister Antonia, 79, looks puzzled when asked what motivated her riches-to-rags choice nearly 30 years ago.

“I don’t understand why people are so amazed,” she said. “To give help is easy. To ask for it is hard.”

Just 5-foot-2 but crackling with energy, Sister Antonia holds counseling sessions and performs countless small tasks on behalf of the 7,100 inmates at La Mesa State Penitentiary, just across the U.S. border from San Diego. In come bandages, soap and medicine; out go messages to loved ones beyond the prison’s high walls.

Sister Antonia has long been a caretaker — she raised seven children.

At 50, she traded her dresses and a spacious home for a homemade habit and a prison where conditions have led to inmate riots, including three that she helped quell.

“I’m effective in riots because I’m not afraid. I just pray and walk into it,” she said. “A woman in a white veil walks in, someone they know loves them. So silence comes, explanation comes and arms go down.”

Her work has been recognized in books and, this month, she was inducted into the Washington-based Hall of Fame for Caring Americans. Her admirers include not just inmates, but wardens and guards too.

“Wardens come and go, and I will, too, but Mother Antonia will always be here,” said Jose Francisco Jimenez Gomez, warden for the past 1 years. “She is like a ray of sunshine.”

The only sunlight in her tiny cell filters through two small windows with a view of a guard tower and a barbed-wire fence. A white sheet serves as the door to a cramped bathroom with a cold-water shower.

She walks through the prison with a beaming smile, waving at inmates and guards and kissing many on their cheeks. She address them as “mi hijo” (my son).

“Everyone loves her,” said Jose Luis Romero, who is serving 4 years for stealing a car. “You always feel better about yourself after seeing her.”

Sister Antonia was born Mary Clarke in Los Angeles, the second of three children. Her father made a fortune selling office supplies to defense contractors during World War II. The family lived in Beverly Hills and had an 11-bedroom, ocean-view summer home in Laguna Beach, south of Los Angeles. Later, she moved to Ventura County, her last home before the prison.

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