Redemption a core theme as Sister Prejean adds new directions to work

Published: 2005-05-12

BETHESDA, Md. (CNS) -- More than 20 years after she first started learning about the death penalty when she became the spiritual adviser to a man on Louisiana's death row, Sister Helen Prejean still approaches the issue of capital punishment with an educator's enthusiasm. In public speeches, the 66-year-old member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille is very much the storyteller. She holds an audience artfully, as she weaves Scripture passages, public opinion data and statistics about who is prosecuted under capital punishment laws into personal stories of the six men she has accompanied to their executions and the stories of their survivors and the families of murder victims. She advocates for better legal representation, for moratoriums and reviews of how states apply the death penalty, and for the abolition of capital punishment. A constant theme of her work has been the subject of redemption. Sister Prejean was nearing the final leg of a three-month national speaking tour to promote her new book, "The Death of Innocents," when she spoke at several Washington-area events early in May.

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