Nun Shares Experience As Spiritual Advisor To Inmate On Death Row

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Wednesday is International Peace Day and a nun visited a local school to share her experience as a spiritual advisor to an inmate on death row.

Sister Helen Prejean spoke to a standing room only crowd at Mount de Sales Academy. She told the students about how she became pen pals with an inmate at Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. She started to visit him and eventually became his spiritual advisor.

Sister Prejean says she got a close up look at the state’s death penalty process and how it affects the inmate and the victim’s family. She used her experience to write a booked entitled, “Dead Man Walking: An Eye Witness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.”

She hopes sharing her experience with students will cause them to reflect on life and work to abolish the death penalty in Georgia.

“I’ve watched six people be killed by the state and I’ve also gotten involved with the victim’s families who just wonder the death penalties promised to them to help them heal and they wait 10, 15 years and the healing never happens,” Sister Prejean said. “I’m here to take the students over to both sides of this crime so that they can deal with their own ambivalent feelings that most people have about it.”

Sister Prejean’s book was number one on the New York Times best-seller list for 31 weeks. The book was also turned into a movie back in 1996 starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

Click here for more information on Sister Prejean and her book.