Nun Who Ministered at Tijuana's Notorious La Mesa Penitentiary, Dies at 86 Sandra Dibble - The San Diego Union-Tribune
go to original October 17, 2013

Jody Hammond, the filmmaker of "La Mama: An American Nun's Life In A Mexican Prison," talked to KPBS last year about Mother Antonia, who became a nun at age 50 and has called Tijuana's most notorious prison, La Mesa Penitentiary, home since 1978. (KPBSSanDiego)

Sister Antonia Brenner, a one-time Beverly Hills resident who found her calling ministering to the inmates of one of Mexico’s most violent and overcrowded prisons, has died.

The diminutive, twice-divorced mother of seven spent more than three decades at Tijuana’s notorious La Mesa Penitentiary, making her home in a 10-foot-by-10-foot cell. She offered inmates everything from blankets to medicine to bail money. She led prayers and washed the dead for burial. La Madre Antonia, they called her, and she said they were mis hijos, her children.

Sister Antonia, who had a weak heart and was in poor health for years, died Thursday morning at the Eudist Servants of the 11th Hour convent in Tijuana. She was 86.

Read the rest at The San Diego Union-Tribune

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