“The Cathedral,” Pablo Escobar’s former luxury jail, will be turned into an elderly home, Spanish press agency EFE reported Tuesday.
What used to be Colombia’s most luxurious prison — it was often referred to as Hotel Escobar or Club Medellin — has been empty for 20 years after the country’s most famous drug lord fled from captivity in 1992.
The building was ransacked by locals until 2007 when several Benedict monks converted parts of the former jail into a chapel and constructed a commemorative wall dedicated to Escobar’s victims that reads, “He who doesn’t know his history is condemned to repeat it.”
The monks, who are regularly visted by religious locals and curious tourists, now want to turn the jail-turned-religious center into an elderly home. It is expected that the home will be ready to receive locals from Escobar’s hometown of Envigado, located just outside Medellin, in September.
“The home will be for people with little resources or that are disabled,” monk Elkin Velez told the press agency, adding that the monks have begun studying geriatric medicine to provide better care to their guests.
Pablo Escobar was killed on a Medellin rooftop in December 1993, a year and a half after the army, the U.S. DEA and the paramilitary group “Los Pepes” began a manhunt for Colombia’s most infamous citizen.