Helen Prejean, MA Biography
- Title:
- Anti-Death Penalty Activist and Catholic Nun of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille
- Position:
- Con to the question "Should the Death Penalty Be Allowed?"
- Reasoning:
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“I say in my talks that the death penalty epitomizes the deepest wounds in our society, which are militarism, poverty, and racism! We’ve got a social problem, so we send in the Marines. We target the enemy, dehumanize, terminate him. It’s that same war-making spirit that makes the death penalty…
We are just beginning to see a thaw in a huge glacier that we’ve been locked into with the death penalty since 1976. At least six states have initiatives for a moratorium, most recently in Illinois. Polls show that support is dropping. It’s down to sixty-one percent from seventy-five percent. In 1999 it dropped five percent.
I think people are more aware of the eighty-seven innocent people that have now come off of Death Row, that the supposed best criminal justice system in the world has a lot of flaws in it. I think it’s raised consciousness about the death penalty, and how we don’t need it.”
“One Woman Talking: An Interview With Sister Helen Prejean,” Fellowship of Reconciliation website, May-June 2000
- Involvement and Affiliations:
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- Catholic Nun, Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, 1957-present
- Prision Ministry, 1981-present
- Honorary Cahir, Moratorium Campaign
- Former Board Member, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, 1985-1995
- Author of Dead Man Walking (1993) which became a film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn
- Member, Amnesty International
- Honorary member, Murder Victim Families for Reconciliation
- Former Religious Education Director, St. Frances Cabrini Parish, New Orleans
- Former junior and senior high school teacher
- Education:
-
- MA, Religious Education, St. Paul’s University, 1973
- BA, English and Education, St. Mary’s Dominican College, 1962
- Other:
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- Recipient of dozens of awards and honorary degrees from all over the world
- Quoted in: