BY ERIKA ANDERSON

Staff Writer

ATLANTA--When Sister Helen Prejean entered the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, she was firm in her belief that she was a nun, not a social worker or a politician.

Now the renowned author of "Dead Man Walking," and 1998 Nobel Peace Prize nominee is one of the most sought after public speakers, having made appearances on dozens of television programs and at public assemblies, each time reaffirming her solid stand against the death penalty.

Growing up in a strong Catholic family in the 1950s, Sister Prejean first felt called to be a nun when she was educated by the Sisters of St. Joseph in high school.

"We had very dynamic, great nuns...and they were great teachers. I wanted to be a teacher. They were humorous, they had faith, they cared about us. Plus I grew up in a great, deeply Catholic family...and in the family there was a great love and respect for religious vocations," she said. "So when I said in my junior year of high school, 'I think I want to be a sister,' I got a lot of love and support."

In 1957, at the age of 18, Helen Prejean left her family to join the religious community and says she cried all the way from her home in Baton Rouge to the motherhouse in New Orleans.

"In those days...when you joined religious life, you really left your family, because it was cloistered. We were a teaching order, but you know you would never eat with your family or be with your family or visit your family home. We were very removed."

Sister Prejean said she "unfolded" with her community as the changes of Vatican II took place a few years after she became a sister.

"The community flowered and developed into where we could be a part of the human race with people and not be separated," she said. "Holiness didn't come from being separated. It came from being immersed in people, especially the poorest and most suffering people. That was a gradual unfolding."

Sister Prejean spent the next several years teaching seventh and eighth grades and training novices and was one of the first sisters to become a director of religious education.

Then, in 1980, the Sisters of St. Joseph made a commitment that would change Sister Prejean's life forever.

"Our sisters took a stand to be on the side of the poor, and I was part of that stream and current," she said. "Belonging to a community is a precious thing. You're not in isolation where you're always thinking your own thoughts--there's always fermentation going on and debate and the challenge, and so that led me into the St. Thomas Housing Development in 1981."

Sister Prejean moved into the housing project, located in the inner city of New Orleans, among those people that the Sisters of St. Joseph had promised to love and support.

"It was a very short, direct connection between being with poor, African-American people and prison," she said. "I soon learned it was a greased rail straight to the prison and death row."

Sister Prejean was then asked to be a pen pal to Patrick Sonnier, a young Cajun man sentenced to death for the gruesome murder of two teenagers.

"The image in my mind was that if people were in prison they must be really bad and the people on death row...they've done the worst possible crimes. I think there is a kind of notion that people on death row are people who have killed and will kill again...they are just violent killer people," she said.

"When I looked into Patrick Sonnier's face the first time I visited--I knew there was goodness in him from his letters, but when I visited him, I was so nervous and I was amazed when I looked into his face and saw how human he was and that we could talk to one another, just two human beings," she said. "It was such an amazing experience that has been confirmed in so many ways since."

Since her experience in 1984 with Sonnier, not only has Sister Prejean's image of criminals changed, but her stand on the death penalty, which had been just a thought in the back of her mind, has been brought full force to the top of her agenda.

"I didn't have a strong conviction much about social justice before I really woke up....I see this as an important awakening, an enlightenment--my own religious conversion as to what the Gospel of Jesus was about," she said. "When I was in high school there were even a couple of executions that happened in Louisiana. It wasn't even a blip on my radar screen. I don't even remember it happening."

"Then, of course, to get ratcheted into this thing, to accompany someone like Patrick Sonnier...and actually watch him be killed in the electric chair, well, that so galvanizes--almost like an indelible mark left on your soul like a sacrament--to go through that process of death and then to watch this legalized form of death, you're changed forever," she said.

In her over 14 years of ministry to death row inmates, Sister Prejean has accompanied four men to their executions, including Sonnier.

"Each time it's hard to get your mind around it," she said. "Every time is like the first time--it doesn't get easier. It's hard because these people are healthy and they don't have to die. It almost gives you a state of disbelief and what I can do is surround them with love and dignity."

Sister Prejean now also works to minister to the families of murder victims, founding "Survive," a victims advocacy group in New Orleans.

"It's not complicated," she said. "Just like there are two arms on the cross, the church needs to be on both sides of this cross, with the death row inmate, upholding the dignity and value of a person even when they've done terrible crimes, but also with the victims' families and not leaving them alone, but showing them in a concrete way our loving presence."

Sister Prejean wrote "Dead Man Walking" as a form of healing for herself, she said, but also to teach others about the misinterpretations of the death penalty. The movie, based on the book, Sister Prejean said, is a "miracle," because it reaches a much larger audience who hears her message. The movie has raised over $300,000 for the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Sister Prejean refers to Susan Sarandon, who won an Academy Award for her portrayal of the nun in the movie, as the "midwife of 'Dead Man Walking.'"

Sister Prejean now has a constant stream of speaking appointments and is on the road much of the year. However, she continues to form relationships and minister to men on death row. She said that she gets much of her solitary prayer time on planes, but that she rarely gets worn out.

"When we're really in harmony with God's Spirit, you don't get worn out," she said. "You get tired, but you never really get worn out."

Referring to her first intentions when she entered religious life, Sister Prejean said that her life actually has not taken that different a course.

"I still feel like I am a teacher," she said. "My classroom's bigger now, it includes the United States and Europe and the United Nations and a lot of media interviews, but basically it's living the Gospel message the best that I can and sharing what I learn along the way."

"What I do when I give talks all across the country is not a lecture. It's storytelling and I just take people with me through these experiences and let them sort things out for themselves."