Sister Helen Prejean is a leading advocate for an end to the death penalty in the United States. On April 25, 2024, she shared her experience as an advocate for the incarcerated with DePaul Prep’s junior class. This is the second annual occurrence of this talk.

During her visit with DePaul Prep’s junior class, Sister Helen discussed her work with those who had been sentenced to death and were living on Death Row, and how that strengthened both her faith and her resolve to advocate for change in the justice system, specifically in regard to the death penalty.

Head of the Religion Department at DePaul Prep, Bernadette Raspante, says she hopes this talk will become a yearly tradition at DePaul Prep. She believes that this year’s talk offered a different perspective than the talk from last year, as this year Sister Helen was able to focus more on her own personal perspectives and experiences with her work, which can be attributed to the prep work that was done in Ethics and Social Justice classes in the weeks prior towards Sister Helen’s visit. Raspante adds that since DePaul Prep “already had a relationship with [Sister Helen], we knew what to expect.”

In order to prepare for her visit, all sections of Ethics and Social Justice, DePaul Prep’s junior religion class, were exposed to some of Sister Helen’s work through media. However, how this was done was left up to the teacher of each class. Some classes read her book, Dead Man Walking, that details her experience as a spiritual aide to a man on death row. Some classes watched the movie version of that same book, and others watched Ted Talks and interviews of Sister Helen, in order to be familiar with her work before the talk. Junior Rose Havrish says that “the work we did in class tied in really well to what Sister Helen was talking about.”

Sister Helen said that she believed the “soil was well tilled” in reference to her experience speaking to the junior audience, meaning that the work done in Ethics classes prior to her visit had prepared students well for her talk.

Florence Merkl-Deutsch, Director of Mission and Ministry at DePaul Prep, said she also hopes this talk will be a recurring tradition at DePaul Prep. She believes that Sister Helen is able to teach students “how to love like Jesus loves” through accounts of her work and life, bringing great value to the DePaul Prep community.

The visit was organized in cooperation with DePaul University’s Mission and Ministry office, where Sister Helen has a longstanding partnership. Sister Helen makes an annual visit to DePaul University every year because the university is one of the largest repositories of the archives of her work. Sister Helen’s existing partnership with DePaul University, as well as the partnership between DePaul University and DePaul Prep’s Mission and Ministry departments, helped coordinate Sister Helen’s visit with the Junior class.

Sister Helen’s talk left a lasting impression on faculty and students alike. Junior Mateo Rimando says that he was intrigued by how Sister Helen was “able to talk about a very serious topic while also bringing a little bit of comedy to it, which is something that is very rare, and Havrish says that her talk “did a good job of bringing attention to a serious topic while still being interesting.”

Merkl-Deutsch says that Sister Helen’s “work and ministry is super important for our students to continue to learn about,” and these talks are hopefully the beginning of an important addition to DePaul Prep’s spiritual community.