Rosado Nominated for National JPIC Award

PHILADELPHIA — Secular Franciscan Felix Rosado has been nominated for the 2026 National Justice, Peace, and Integrity Award established by the United States Secular Franciscan Order. Rosado is a member of St. John the Evangelist Fraternity. The award recognizes those Award to recognize those Franciscans who are dedicated to promoting peace, social justice and care for creation by the testimony of their human lives and their courageous initiatives, working to animate these timeless Gospel values in the world in a Franciscan way.

In 1995, Felix Rosado, at age 18, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole at SCI Graterford (now SCI Phoenix) in Pennsylvania. During a course with Temple University in 2007 called the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, Felix read Transcending: Reflections of Crime Victims, by Howard Zehr. It was then that he began to look at his life in terms of accountability rather than punishment. A year later, he became co-founder of Let’s Circle Up, a restorative justice project that has enabled more than 2,000 incarcerated and non-incarcerated people to learn about healing after harm. Their vision is to circle up the world.

In 2013, Rosado professed as a Secular Franciscan while working on his Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies from Villanova University. With the support of St. John the Evangelist Fraternity and other community members, Felix’s sentence was commuted by Governor Tom Wolf and he re-entered society after 27 years, at the age of 45. Rosado has been an active member of the Fraternity since his release and served as our interim treasurer of the fraternity when the elected treasurer resigned for personal reasons.

Secular Franciscans value relationships in the fraternal spirit of the Gospel. Through his prison experience, Rosado gives hope to others through wisdom acquired in his transformative journey.

Rosado has also been instrumental in helping the fraternity re-establish contact with two other brothers who remain on the inside. He has encouraged continued communication through our Prison Apostolate and has been instrumental in connecting OFS-SJE with the Free Our People in PA, Abolitionist Law Center, and Straight Ahead. On March 26, 2026, the PA Supreme Court released a landmark ruling in the Commonwealth v. Derrick Lee, declaring that mandatory life without parole is unconstitutional for second degree murder. This ruling affects our two brothers on the inside and over 1,200 in total.

This legislation would expand opportunities to rehabilitate programs to help divert youth away from the carceral system rather than going deeper into it. Rosado is an adjunct instructor at Chestnut Hill College and the Community College, and he continues to coordinate a youth restorative justice diversion program called Healing Futures with the Youth Art and Self-empowerment Project (YASP). YASP is a youth-led, intergenerational organization fighting to end youth incarnation, with a focus on eliminating the practice of charging children as adults. Together they implement alternatives for responding to harm and violence in Philadelphia. Some of their work was recently displayed at the Interfaith Philly Annual Award Meeting.

Rosado has recently received funding and now is the Executive Director of Let’s Circle Up, which is now a non-profit organization. His work with the Catholic Mobilization Network continues. He is featured in a mini documentary and often appears as a guest speaker at CMN events. He is the author of Justice from the Inside Up: A Restorative Justice Education Facilitator’s Manual. “It is the Gospel way of doing justice,” Rosado says. He tells us that restorative justice is aligned with Catholic Social Teaching, since everyone has a right to be part of processes and systems that impact their lives.