Denison University has announced that Sister Helen Prejean will serve as the keynote speaker at the college’s 175th commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 14.
At the ceremony, Prejean will be recognized with the conferring of an honorary degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.
Denison University President Adam Weinberg commented, “Sister Helen Prejean has inspired Denison students and faculty through her work with the disadvantaged, the voiceless and the powerless. Her remarkable commitment to civic responsibility is a terrific example of the difference one person can make.”
“To say that Sister Helen Prejean is simply a death penalty abolitionist is to miss the point of her life’s work,” said Jack Shuler, associate professor of English. “Sister Helen is an advocate for a radical empathy for all human beings, teaching that all human beings deserve to live with dignity.”
Prejean has been instrumental in sparking national dialogue on the death penalty and helping to shape the Catholic Church’s newly vigorous opposition to state executions. She travels around the world giving talks about her ministry and considers herself a southern storyteller.
A member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, Prejean spent her first years with the Sisters, teaching religion to junior high school students. Realizing that being on the side of poor people is an essential part of the Gospel, she moved into the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans and worked at Hope House from 1981 to 1984.
During that time, she became the spiritual advisor for death row inmate Patrick Sonnier at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. After witnessing his execution, she wrote a book about the experience, “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate.” The book grew into a movie, an opera and a play for high schools and colleges.
Since 1984, Prejean has divided her time between educating citizens about the death penalty and counseling individual death row prisoners. She has accompanied six men to their deaths. In doing so, she began to suspect that some of those executed were not guilty. This realization inspired her second book, “The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.” Sr. Helen is presently at work on another book, “River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey.”