The Rev. George R. Castillo, a former chaplain at the Eglin Federal Prison Camp, knew when he was a young boy that he wanted to be a preacher.
“I was called from the womb,” said Castillo, who grew up in Belize and is a member of the Garifuna ethnic group. “At the tender age of 4 I told my mother I wanted to be a minister.”
Castillo, who retired from Eglin in 1993 and lives in Shalimar, was recently honored by Rutgers University at its 39th annual New Jersey Folk Festival in late April. The festival spotlighted Garifuna heritage, and Castillo was recognized as a Garifuna who has demonstrated “exceptional commitment and service to humanity.”
“I was surprised,” he said. “It was quite an honor.”
Castillo, who is ordained in the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church-Disciples of Christ, was the second black chaplain in the country’s federal penal system. He started his career at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary and worked for the next 20 years in Georgia, Kentucky and Florida.
Castillo’s work with inmates was rarely easy, but he approached the ministry as a labor of love.
“It is humbling,” he said. “You see a lot of suffering there and your hearts go out to them.”
At the Eglin prison, Castillo preached every Sunday and recruited volunteers to hold Sunday school for the inmates’ children. In addition to counseling inmates, he also worked with their spouses and children.
At the higher-security prisons, inmates were serving longer sentences and were incarcerated for more serious and violent crimes. At the lower-security prisons such as Eglin, the sentences were much shorter.
Inmates at both types of prisons struggled with overwhelming feelings of guilt and depression, Castillo said.
“They feel guilty because they should be out here taking care of their families,” he said.
Instead, they often missed major milestones in their families’ lives, he added.
Castillo, who authored an autobiography titled “My Life Between the Cross and the Bars,” has always been a strong advocate of counseling, education and marketable skills training for prison inmates.
“We have to remember that 90 to 95 percent of the incarcerated will be walking on the streets again,” he said. “The question we need to answer is what kind of people do we want coming out of our prisons.”
Through the years, Castillo and his wife of 56 years, Muriel, have kept in touch with various inmates. He even preached the ordination sermon for one former prisoner.
“Sometimes people would like to throw the keys away and forget about (prisoners), so to speak,” he said. “But it’s important to respond to them as human beings. … Hopefully, when they come back out, they will be better human beings.”
