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Community Corner

'Dead Man Walking: the Journey Continues' by Sister Helen PreJean

Known worldwide for Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean has been instrumental in sparking national dialogue on the death penalty and helping to shape the Roman 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. As a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, Prejean first taught 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 1984 to 1986.During this time, she began corresponding with death row inmate Patrick Sonnier and became his spiritual adviser. After witnessing his execution, she wrote Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. It became 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. Suspicions that some of those executed were not guilty inspired her second book, The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, which was released in 2004. She is currently working on her third book, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey.

Admission is free. Sponsored by the Artists and Speakers Committee. For more information, contact Amanda Whealon, awhealo@callutheran.edu or 805-493-3950.

Event will take place in the Samuelson Chapel at California Lutheran University.

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