Helen Prejean, CSJ
Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille
Helen Prejean joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille in 1957. In 1981 she worked at the St. Thomas Housing Project with poor inner-city residents and began counseling death row inmates at Louisiana State Penitentiary--a ministry she continues today. She has accompanied five men to execution. She also works with murder victims' families and founded a group in New Orleans called Survive. Sister Helen is the author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the U. S. , which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 and again in 1999. She has received many awards, including the Laetare Medal from Notre Dame and the Champion of Liberty Award from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She has received twenty honorary degrees, including ones from Georgetown University, Amherst, the University of Glasglow, and the University of San Francisco. She is honorary chairperson of Hands Off Cain, an international group based in Rome working for the abolition of the death penalty, a member of Amnesty International and the U.S. National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, where she served as a board member for ten years.
Sr. Prejean spoke at our "Culture of Death" conference in 2000.
