Pope Francis visited a man jailed for selling cannabis

Published

11 years ago

September 28, 2015 - Updated June 11, 2025

During his visit to the Curran-Fromhold prison in Philadelphia on Sunday morning, the pope visited someone who has spent a year and a half behind bars for trying to sell a plant that is at the center of an entire industry and brings in millions of dollars in the American states where cannabis is legal.

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Ed Gilchrist is 43 years old. He was imprisoned after trying to sell 200g of marijuana to undercover police officers in Northeast Philadelphia. This was his first marijuana-related offense.

«Someone put me in touch with them. He introduced me to them, I think it was someone who was trying to make amends after taking to driving under the influence of alcohol or cannabis, or something like that,» he says. «I've been doing this for a long time. An acquaintance had me meet a guy, who was actually a cop, because she wanted to get out of some shit, and I got caught.»

Gilchrist admits it's frustrating to be in prison for selling a drug that others can sell legally and the President Obama described no more dangerous than alcohol«.

«I knew it was illegal, I knew the game,» he says anyway. When he gets out of prison, he can't imagine selling cannabis legally, by moving to Colorado for example.

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Pope Francis had been planning a visit to the prison for some time, and met around 100 prisoners and their families.