'Dear Carlos': Pope Francis writes moving letter to 16-year-old juvenile gang member serving an 11-year sentence

'If society does not forgive me, I know God forgives me for my sins.'

Troubled youth Carlos Adrian Vazquez Jr. plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter when he was only 16-years-old. After struggling for two years of an 11-year sentence, Vasquez felt suicidal, angry and, finally, repentant. He wrote Pope Francis a letter to beg forgiveness. To his surprise, the pontiff responded with a letter of his own.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - "Dear Carlos," Pope Francis wrote. "I pray that as you and your fellow residents celebrate the opening of the Holy Door, you may receive these gifts and be filled with peace and hope. Know that the Holy Father is thinking of you and praying for you. And please remember to pray for me, because I greatly need your prayers."

Though the letter was short and to-the-point, Vazquez's tumultuous emotions finally calmed.

"[The letter] gave me a lot of hope knowing that there are people like the Pope who still have not given up on us," Vazquez told CNN. "I know I've made mistakes and have hurt people, but what I learned in my two years and five months I've been imprisoned, I didn't know I was hurting people and I was hurting myself too."

The pontiff's letter inspired Vazquez to write to the victim's family and admitted he regretted his crime "because of the people [he] hurt, but [he has] to fall to learn how to get up."

Speaking of the letter he wrote to the family, Vazquez admitted: "I asked them to forgive me and told them no words would ever give them back the life I destroyed, but I hope one day they can forgive me for my actions and now I just ask for forgiveness and I want to live the life that my victim didn't have a chance to live and be good."

Vazquez's realization that he was hurting others included his parents, who remember the day they received the call that their son had been arrested. 

"It was a Saturday, and we were heading home," Carlos, Vasquez's father, recalled. "We received a call from the police letting us know that our son had been arrested and was being accused of murder.

"It's been a difficult experience, very hard for me and my family and my other children, he admitted. "In some way, you could say I feel guilty because I didn't hear his cry for help, and we didn't understand tat that time that he was asking for help."

When Vazquez first entered the juvenile facility, Rev. Michael Kennedy, a Jesuit priest who works with troubled youths, recalled the boy often fought and was "very crazy."

"He would get into fight here. He had nine fights at one time in a short period of time, and all he would think about was his gang," Kennedy recalled.

"It's easy to say you've changed, but the change is in the actions of someone," Kennedy added. Vazquez "started to read a lot of articles about the Pope, and he felt he was a person who had transformed his own self, and he knew that the Pope had a special place in his heart for the inmates, prisoners."

Though he still has nine years to serve, Vazquez changed his attitude and life around thanks to Pope Francis' response.

The letter Vasquez received made a significant impact in his life and Vazquez divulged: "It gives me a lot of pride because it's a message from God, that we are all humans, and he gives us hope that God wants all of us to be equal and we all commit mistakes, and we can get up and continue."

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