The Most Famous Nun in America

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When Sister Helen Prejean was 18, she became a nun. A fellow nun once described her as a hurricane. Do you think that you are the most famous nun in America? What does "famous" mean to you? I call it Catholic Prozac.

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean was invited to write a letter to a man on death row in Louisiana’s Angola State Prison named Elmo Patrick Sonnier. She told us, “I thought that all I was going to be doing was writing letters. And lo and behold, two years later, I am in that execution chamber.” She’s now 81, and has been present at the executions of six men.

Sister Helen’s book, Dead Man Walking, is about her time as a spiritual advisor to Elmo Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie. It was adapted into a movie starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn.

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