Francis Kodiyan

Kodiyan was born on 20 May 1961 at Chendamangalam in Ernakulam district, Kerala, to Kodiyan Vareed Itterah and Athanasia Payyappally Kovulan. He joined the Missionary Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament and was sent for priestly studies to St Thomas Apostolic Seminary, Vadavathoor, Kottayam. He was ordained in 1990.

In 1993 his congregation sent him to Rome for further study, and in 1998 he defended a doctoral thesis on the trajectory of personal religious conversion at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

On 8 December 1981, while on telephone duty at the seminary with fellow student Varghese Karippery, Kodiyan resolved with him to work for prisoners and others on the margins. The pair formed a prayer group, which took the name Jesus Fraternity in January 1986. They first visited Kottayam sub-jail on 18 July 1985, and in March 1986 launched an All Kerala Prison Pilgrimage. The Kerala Catholic Bishops' Conference recognised Jesus Fraternity in September 1989.

After his ordination in 1990 Kodiyan became assistant director of Jesus Fraternity at the Pastoral Orientation Centre, Palarivattom. In that role he established Snehashramam, the first rehabilitation centres for released prisoners: one for men at Thrissur in 1991 and one for women at Thiruvananthapuram in 1992. The movement took the name Prison Ministry India at a national gathering in Bangalore in 1994, was registered as a national body in 1995, and was recognised by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India in 2000.

In 2003 Kodiyan founded the Reformative Research and Documentation Centre at Thrissur, which moved to a new building at Carmelaram, Bengaluru, in 2020. Drawing on his doctoral work he set out an eightfold path for prisoners' reformation, comprising reachout, release, repentance, reconciliation, reformation, rehabilitation, reintegration and redemption. He has edited and published periodicals for and about prisoners, including Pulari (1987), The Echo, Prison Voice and the quarterly Reformative Explorations, and has written books including Saga of Divine Providence (2000), Love Bomb: Prisoners' Reformation Trajectory (2018), The Lost: An Eightfold Path for Prisoners' Reformation (2019) and From Captivity to Calling: The Legacy of Prison Ministry India (2025).

Kodiyan took the ministry's work into international forums, attending the ninth world congress of the International Catholic Commission for Prison Pastoral Care in Warsaw in September 1996, and in November 2019 presenting a paper on Prison Ministry India's work at a meeting on prison pastoral care convened by the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.[2][3][4][5][6]