In 1986 Sister Matilde Calad of the Good Shepherd Congregation assumed the role of mother superior at the Santiago Female Counselling Center (Centro de Orientación Femenino, or COF), previously known as the Women’s Correctional House, and simply referred to as the “correctional” (correccional) by prisoners. Sister Matilde started in the correccional when it was in Lira Street, and she moved with it in 1962 to its new site in Vicuña Mackenna Avenue. In previewing her tenure in the 1980s, she looked back to the nineteenth century: “The French sisters who came to found the mission in Chile used to say: Oh Chile, my mission of love. Analyzing my own religious life and my preaching, I have said: the C.O.F. is the mission of my love”. This traditional mission persisted during a period of upheaval in the Vicuña Mackenna correccional from 1962 until the sisters handed over the administration of the prison to Gendarmería, the state prison service, in 1996. Prison guards were trained by the prison service and their presence in the prison expanded. Prisoner demographics shifted, and the prison population grew significantly. This paper examines the evolution of the congregation’s thinking on rehabilitation and its application inside the Santiago correccional. It reveals how the sisters adapted to the shifting realities of Chilean female criminality and the professionalization of prison staff by incorporating external technical and scientific expertise into their “mission of love”.

Leith Passmore, “Love, Rehabilitation, and Professionalization: The Women’s Correctional House in Santiago under the Good Shepherd Congregation (1962-1996),” Revista Iberoamericana (forthcoming 2026).