Helen Prejean: Death Row's Nun by Joyce Duriga (review)

Anyone who has encountered Sister Helen Prejean knows how she grips people's attention, bringing us to care about issues to which she is passionately committed. Her death row ministry, captured in print, film, and opera, changed the hearts and minds of many Americans who had given the death penalty little consideration. When the United States finally abolishes the death penalty, Sister Helen Prejean can rest assured of the significant role she played in that momentous decision.

Sister Helen understands the power of stories. In less than 100 pages, Joyce Duriga impressively tells a biographical story that draws readers into the journey that shaped Sister Helen's commitment to abolishing the death penalty. Having interacted with Sister Helen numerous times and read just about everything written by or on her, I hoped that Duriga could capture the story of this remarkable woman. Duriga has written a book that is well worth reading by both those first encountering Sister Helen and those long familiar with her story.

Duriga captures well how lives unfold, full of surprises, serendipity, and confluences that may only be understood retrospectively. She begins with Sister Helen's final walk with Patrick Sonnier to his execution by electrocution in 1984. She brings readers into the hidden painstaking details of the execution process, revealing what brought Sister Helen to believe we must end a practice that reduces persons to their worst action and risks killing the innocent. From her account of this transformative experience, Duriga pivots into conversations with Sister Helen in her seventies, retrospectively unfolding the journey which has defined her life. Duriga captures the mesmerizing details of her story while communicating the electrifying presence of this Sister of St. Joseph she rightly describes as "a diminutive woman" who is truly "a force of nature" (5).

Duriga returns to Sister Helen's beginnings, a Baton Rouge childhood in a community and family shaped by economic privilege and religious belief. Prayer, focused on discerning how God wanted her to use her gifts to do good, became a constant in Helen's life. The intertwined rhythm of prayerful meditation grounded in scripture and engaged action rooted in conviction would sustain her throughout her life. Educated by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, her religious formation was grounded in their charism of serving both the church and society through corporal and spiritual works of mercy. By the age of 18, Helen had a clear sense of her vocation in "an apostolic community, where they prayed like women in cloisters, but also brought the Gospel out among the people through teaching" (9).

Duriga provides an insightful historical overview of this religious order that shaped Sister Helen's journey. Post-Vatican II developments further refined her discernment of a religious vocation that integrated a personal relation with God and the social justice imperatives of the Gospel, especially as focused on persons living on the margins of society. Sister Helen's awakening came gradually as she deepened her understanding of justice and reflected on the unexamined aspects of her own upbringing and society, guided by other Sisters already on the journey she was beginning. Her transformative midlife move into the St. Thomas Housing project, a community wracked by poverty and violence, was the pivotal experience that concretized her daily living of the social justice message of the Gospel. Duriga captures well how living with the poor in this marginalized community transformed Sister Helen's vision of our American society. From this context emerged her acceptance of an invitation to correspond with a man on death row—a simple step that shaped a life of wide-ranging impact.

Duriga brings readers into Sister Helen's journey to execution with Patrick Sonnier—the troubling unease her growing awareness of our criminal justice system triggered, the conflicting emotions exposure to victims and offenders evoked in her, and the tensions Christianity's emphasis on redemptive restoration and the law's emphasis on retaliative retribution clarified. Sister Helen came out...