By Carrie McClish
Staff writer

Deacon Harry Clyde of Assumption Parish in San Leandro has been appointed director of a newly restored diocesan prison ministry program.

The program is being revived following a task force recommendation to Bishop Salvatore Cordileone that the program become an integral part of the evolving diocesan focus on restorative justice.

Besides pastoral care for the incarcerated, the program will help inmates reconcile with the persons they have victimized. It will also assist inmates prepare for a successful return to the community.

Because of diocesan budget constraints, Deacon Clyde will be working without pay, according to Deacon Thom McGowan, director of the diocese’s services division. He will continue as a liturgical minister at Assumption with his prison ministry work meeting his service obligations as a deacon.

Deacon Clyde, 64, has years of experience in prison ministry as well as a commitment to caring for at-risk individuals. A native of San Leandro, he earned a biological sciences degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo before joining the U.S. Army and going to Vietnam. He spent more than 20 years in military service, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.

For several years he lived in Maryland, where he was ordained a permanent deacon for the Baltimore Archdiocese in October 1989.

Today he and his wife Susanne live in the San Leandro home where he grew up. The couple has been active in the teen Confirmation program at Assumption Parish as well as the marriage preparation program. The Clyde family includes four children and seven grandchildren.

The Oakland Diocese has a long history of outreach to the incarcerated, many of those years under the umbrella of Catholic Charities. The late Deacon Frank Beville was chaplain at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin in the 1980s and worked as diocesan coordinator of prison ministry volunteers in the early 1990s as part of a joint collaboration between Catholic Charities and the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Alameda County.

Diocesan involvement in prison ministry waned after the retirement of Deacon Beville, who died in 2007, and funding shortfalls at Catholic Charities resulted in cutbacks in personnel.

Today about 75 lay Catholics continue to provide pastoral care to adults and juveniles in different detention facilities in both Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

Deacon Clyde’s immediate goal is to visit the local detention facilities and meet with those currently ministering there. “I am going to have to rely on the people already on the ground,” he said.

The task force, assembled in 2008 under then Bishop Allen Vigneron to improve outreach to the imprisoned and their families, also recommended a training program for prison ministers.

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