Sister Helen Prejean

"A Crisis of Confidence: Americans' Doubts About the Death Penalty"

(Washington, D.C.) Because of mistakes and a lack of efficacy, the death penalty is losing the confidence of the American public, according to a new poll by RT Strategies to be released on June 9, 2007 at 12 noon EDT. Almost 40% of the U.S. population believe they would be excluded as jurors in capital cases and a strong majority (58%) believe it is time for a moratorium on the death penalty while the process undergoes a careful review. The poll was commissioned by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).

Almost all Americans (87%) believe that an innocent person has already been executed in recent years, and over half (55%) say that fact has affected their views on the death penalty. An overwhelming 69% of the public believes that reforms will not eliminate all wrongful convictions and executions. DPIC analyzes the poll results in a new report, A Crisis of Confidence: Americans’ Doubts About the Death Penalty.

Read the report in PDF format here.

Source: The Death Penalty Information Center

World Day Against the Death Penalty (10 October 2007)

Dr. Arthur Zitrin, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at New York University Medical Center, an authority on Medical Ethics and Lethal Injection, in discussion with renowned abolitionist and author Sister Helen Prejean on World Day Against the Death Penalty in New York, October 10, 2007.

Photo credit: Elizabeth Zitrin

On 10 October 2003, the first World Day Against the Death Penalty took place. This event was launched by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, which gathers international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), Bar Associations, Unions and local governments from all over the world.

Established by organisations who participated in the first international Congress against the death penalty (Strasbourg, 2001), the Coalition aims at encouraging the establishment of national coalitions, the organisation of common initiatives and the coordination of international lobbying efforts to sensitize states that still maintain the death penalty.

This year the World Day against the Death Penalty will focus on the proposed UN General Assembly resolution for a universal moratorium on executions. The proposal would save lives and give the population of retentionist states an opportunity to see for themselves that a pause in death sentences does not lead to higher crime rates.

Source: World Coalition Against the Death Penalty

Message from Susan Sarandon read by Sister Helen Prejean at the School of the Americas, Fort Benning, GA, November 18, 2005

Susan Sarrandon, Fr. Roy Bourgeois
and Sister Helen Prejean

The subject of torture is very much in the air these days. Currently congress is debating how legally to circumvent the Geneva conventions so that information may be extracted from suspected terrorists. Some blatantly decry the Bill of Rights, saying these rights “go too far.” Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General, has called the Geneva Conventions “quaint.”

Where better for citizens to stand up publicly vs. torture than here at the School of the Americas? Is this not the emblematic center of training for torture as official U.S. policy? It was here at SOA that a torture manual as official policy was first exposed, thanks to the courageous efforts of Roy Bourgeois on whose shoulders we stand today.

Torture is torture whether at SOA or Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo or - as recently exposed in Baghdad – the secret detention centers where Shiites have been torturing Sunnis suspected of insurgency.

Closer to home, how long will it take for our courts, our Congress and our citizens to admit that the death penalty which confines human beings in 6 x 9 ft. cells for 15 or 20 years before taking them out to be killed is also torture? Has not the U.S. through George Bush, Sr. signed the U.N. Convention vs. Torture? Doesn’t that agreement condemn mental torture along with physical torture? What could be worse than waiting for years and years to be taken out and killed? My friend, Sister Helen’s book DEATH OF INNOCENTS takes you there, helps you see the torture and deeply flawed system that condemns to death innocent and guilty alike.

The names of the enemy change: Communists, worst-of-the-worst criminals, terrorists, insurgents – but the foundational principles of human dignity stated in the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights are as needed today as they were in 1948 when they were proclaimed. Thank you, Eleanor Roosevelt! Article 3: Every human being has the right to LIFE. Article 5: No human being should be subjected to cruel and degrading punishment or torture.

These our times, where we witness our country’s arrogant attempts at empire building in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has led to the death and suffering of innocent civilians – how many? 150,000 – 200,000? Only later will we know the actual numbers. These are the times to raise our voices – and I join my voice with yours – to call for a new day in our world. We must never allow ourselves to be cowed into believing that we are unpatriotic when we criticize government policies and actions. May our outcry for justice today in this place find voice in letters and visits and dialogue with elected officials until this emblematic School of Torture is closed and America the Justice Maker, the Economic Peace Maker comes to birth in the world. And may our presence here today hasten that much-needed birth.

DRAMA OF DEATH ROW COMES TO PITTSBURGH

I want to invite Governor Ed Rendell, Mayor Tom Murphy, Pennsylvania legislators, as well as all interested Pennsylvanians on a journey with me. l ask of you just one evening.

Beginning June 5, sit side by side with me in the darkness of a concert hall in Pittsburgh and experience the musical mosaic and drama of the opera, Dead Man Walking. Together we we'll walk down a path to deeper spiritual reflection while exploring the darkest and brightest aspects of our humanity.

The Pittsburgh performance of this opera, based on my book published in 1993, could not come at a better time or place. Pennsylvania stands at a crossroads. On June 1, Hubert Michael is scheduled to die, the fourth execution in Pennsylvania since the death penalty was reinstated nine years ago. Pennsylvania's Death Row, with 227 men and 5 women currently awaiting execution, is the fourth largest in the nation. Over 90% of these Pennsylvania Death Row inmates could not afford a lawyer at their trial, and were therefore represented by the same state that sentenced them to death.

Many of the inmates are mentally retarded or mentally ill. Two years ago next month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the execution of the mentally retarded is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. However, this ruling might not save Pennsylvania's mentally retarded or mentally ill Death Row inmates. Hubert Michael is one of those men.

Isn't it time for Pennsylvania to re-examine this system? Many groups, including my congregation, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille, have been calling for a moratorium on capital punishment in Pennsylvania and throughout the nation.

Governor Rendell has the opportunity to follow Illinois Governor George Ryan. After the release of 13 Death Row inmates based on findings of innocence, Ryan enacted a moratorium on capital punishment in January 2000, stating the system was "fraught with errors."

Errors may exist in any state's system of capital punishment. In all, over 100 people have been exonerated from Death Row since 1978, including six in Pennsylvania. One of these men, Nick Yarris, spent 22 years in solitary confinement on Death Row for a crime he did not commit. He was exonerated after DNA evidence proved his unequivocal innocence. I've accompanied five men as they died by the hand of the state, and I personally believe two of these men were innocent.

These experiences cemented one of my strongest convictions: that it is a profound moral contradiction to give the state the power to kill in order to prove murder is wrong. This may not be your viewpoint. Indeed, there are many views on this subject, all of which are profoundly expressed in the opera, Dead Man Walking. The savage and heinous crime of the rape and murder of innocents is not ignored in the production; rather, it is fully revealed. The excruciating emotional pain experienced by the victims' families is explored. Viewing this opera, you experience not only the journey of a Death Row inmate awaiting execution, but also the unimaginable journey undertaken by the family of two murdered teen-agers.

Dead Man Walking is an artistic work reflecting what occurs behind the scenes--away from the public eye--when collectively as a society, we execute a person.

Experiencing this opera took me to a deeper place. It is my sincerest hope this wiIl happen for others, too. I firmly believe art provides a channel for emotions and discoveries that we may not be able to access in other ways. So, pIease, join my congregation and me. There need be no argument or debate.

It is my hope that by listening and watching this opera we may share more than an exchange of words. Look for me at the Benedum Center in Pittsburgh this June. I'll be the sister with the Louisiana accent, comfortabIe shoes and round glasses.

Sister Helen Prejean
Sisters of St. Joseph of MedaiIle

REPORT FROM THE FRONT - THE INTER-RELIGIOUS PEACE GATHERING IN AACHEN, GERMANY

Since 1986 the Community of Sant' Egidio has gathered the religious leaders of the world to pray for peace and to dialogue aboutit. I began attending the gatherings in 1997 in Padua, Italy, where for the first time, I talked about the death penalty and its importance as a challenge to peace. From this time onward the Community of Sant'Egidio has become a leader in seeking worldwide abolition of the death penalty. When we presented three and a half million signatures calling for a moratorium on the death penalty to Kofi Annan at the United Nations in December 2000, Sant' Egidio was responsible for most of the signatures. Sant' Egidio is a Catholic lay community, now numbering 40,000 members around the world. I found in them a kindred spirit. The thrust of their mission is to befriend poor people and to help them in their quest for justice. Prayer and reflection on the Gospels is also key to their identity. People in Rome come in droves to attend their evening prayer. The Community has brought me to Italy several times - to Reggio Emilia and Parma, to Genoa and Florence to talk to young people about the death penalty and to enlist them in the moratorium campaign. A flock of these young ones were in Aachen. The film of Dead Man Walking has played an important role in awakening them to be involved in the abolition of the death penalty. In Parma I addressed 5,000 young people in a stadium. A band played their original song, the theme of the gathering: "Dead Man Walking No More."

I love being with young people anywhere but Italian young people are especially interesting because their life-loving culture gives them a strong appreciation of human rights. Almost all politicial leaders in Italy consider the death penalty barbaric. I think it's because the Italians suffered so much in World War II. They've never forgotten what happens when government is given power to kill. Many of the leaders in Italy refer to the U.S. as a "young country," which, with the exception of 9/11 has never experienced death and destruction of our own citizens in a violent attack. They don't think much of our president George Bush. In fact, many of them refer to him as a "cowboy" president, who is reckless about using violence to get his way in the world. Pope John Paul II sent a message to the gathering in Aachen, where Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Shinto, and Greek Orthodox were gathered to pray for peace and to dialogue. The hot spots of conflict in the world got special attention at this year's gathering: Muslim-Christian and Israeli - Palestinian. Sometimes differences were sharp - and heated, but when the dialogue was done, on the last day, all of the participants turned to prayer, each according to his or her own tradition: Christians in the Aachen Cathedral, Jews in a synagogue, Muslims,in a mosque.

Townspeople lined the streets and assembled in the square near the cathedral for the final public ceremony. It was so moving to see two turbaned Imams and a Christian leader arm in arm after they had each lit a candle for peace. Marco Gnavi, a leader in the Sant 'Egidio community whispered to us, "All three of them are from Baghdad." (See Eleanor's report for more detail)

After Aachen Eleanor and I visited the Community in Brussels and Antwerp. In Brussels I met with the deputy Mayor, who was instrumental in making Brussels one of the Cities of Life, which lighted the Atomium, a famous sculpture modeled on the atom, with the message lit in five different languages: "No to the death penalty." There are now twelve or so cities in Italy which light up a public building or monument stating their opposition to the death penalty. In Rome, they light the Roman Colisseum (where some of the first state killing took place.) Hopefully we can get the same kind of public witness in the U.S. Imagine how it would be if on December 10, Human Rights Day, cathedrals and churches and synagogues all over the nation were lit up to symbolize the commitment to end government killing.

About my new book.............. I'm writing the last chapter and plan to deliver the manuscript to the editors at Random House in late December or early January. I'm squeezing in writing time over the next several months to finish the book. It looks like the title of the book will be THE MACHINERY OF DEATH. We'll see. Deciding on a title is a collaborative project with the publisher. Hopefully we're looking at publication of the book in June. Then the OTHER WORK begins of going on a book tour and doing media appearances to get word out about the book. Start praying for Oprah Winfrey's heart. I've been on her show when Dead Man Walking was made into a film, and if she has me on her show and features the new book, it will be headed for the best-seller list and be read by a lot of people. As I said in my speech in Aachen, widening the circle of public discourse on the death penalty is the way that we will one day abolish its practice. Suddenly, I look at a calendar and realize that I've been working almost 20 years to end the death penalty.

I carried all of you, my CSJ family, with me to Aachen. Our charism couldn't be more needed in the world: "that they all may be one." Thank God we get to do this precious work of the Gospel - together.

Love from 33,000 feet above the Atlantic, on our way home,
Helen

On September 9, 2003, at the conference “War and Peace: Faiths and Cultures in Dialogue” in Aachen, Germany, Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, delivered a speech, “The Abolition of the Death Penalty: A Target for the XXI Century.” The conference is sponsored by The Community of Sant’Egido (www.santegidio.org) which is a movement dedicated to evangelization and works of social justice, in Rome, Italy and in more than 60 countries throughout the world.

I would like to begin my remarks by honoring the spiritual legacy of Reverent Tairu Furukawa. This holy man was a presenter with me at the peace conference in Bucharest in 1998. He spent 40 years of his life working to end the death penalty in Japan and to free two innocent men from death row there. Since Rev. Furukawa's death, his son Ryuji and daughter, Sayuri, who are with us today, steadfastly continue their father's campaign for life, a campaign I collaborate in every chance I get. I have accompanied five persons to their deaths in the killing chambers of the U.S.- four in Louisiana and one in Virginia - three in the electric chair, two by lethal injection. Witnessing these premeditated killings has transformed my life, changing me from someone passive and compliant with state killing to a passionate abolitionist. For twenty years now I have devoted the energies of my life to educating people about the death penalty. I serve as chairperson of The Moratorium Campaign in the U.S. and collaborate closely with Amnesty International and other organizations working for abolition. I have been working in partnership with San Egidio to gather signatures for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty. Mario Marazziti, here today on this panel, has shown great leadership in this worldwide campaign. When in December 2001 we presented three and a half million moratorium signatures to Kofi Annan at the U.N., the community of San Egidio could take credit for having collected most of the signatures.

The moratorium movement is growing in the U.S., although much slower than in European countries and much of the rest of the world. In the U.S. we have a lot more work to do to change minds and hearts about the death penalty largely because most people in the U.S. know very little about the actual practice of the death penalty and do not reflect deeply on its moral implications. Since the early 1980's, U.S. politicians have seized on the death penalty as a symbol of being "tough on crime" and so-called "justice" for victims' families. Politics in the U.S. has reached an abysmally low level at the current time; and so we have on our hands politicians driven by expediency rather than by moral principles.

But presently there are hopeful signs that among the American people a new consciousness about the death penalty is dawning. Because of the huge number of wrongfully convicted people freed from death row – 111 at present and growing - many Americans have begun to have doubts about the death penalty. For most citizens it is morally unconscionable to think that innocent people are being put to death along with the guilty.

Within the last two years there has been a steady stream of City Council resolutions, newspaper editorials, and initiatives from faith organizations, particularly Catholic bishops and Catholic social justice groups, calling for a moratorium on the death penalty. My fellow nuns in America are particularly active in visiting prisons and working to end the death penalty. Many churches and chapels across America toll bells whenever an execution takes place in their state. The witness of Illinois Governor George Ryan, a former pro-death penalty supporter, who became so disturbed by the large number of wrongful convictions on Illinois' death row, that he overturned the death sentences of 167 men, is unprecedented and has had a powerful impact. Since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. we have lethally injected, electrocuted, gassed, hung, and shot more than 850 persons, especially in Southern states, which account for 85% of the total number of executions. Presently 3500 other persons sit in death row cells awaiting death at the hands of the government. But perhaps the most hopeful sign is the fact that since the recent awareness of the terribly flawed system, the actual number of executions taking place and new death sentences has dropped by half. The first concrete sign that a moratorium is beginning to happen is that, even though the law has not yet been changed, citizens refuse to impose death sentences. At last that trend is beginning in the U.S.

In my work I try to embody the healing work of Jesus by reaching out to death row inmates and to murder victims' families. It is not always easy reaching out to both sides, and sometimes victims' families shun me because they cannot bear the thought that I as spiritual advisor would show respect or compassion to those who have murdered their loved one. In their grief and confusion, some families buy into the retributive "eye for an eye" justice that our government offers them. Of all the countries in the world that practice the death penalty, U. S. politicians are unique in their claim that they support the death penalty for the sake of victims' families, that the death of perpetrators will help heal these suffering families. I think politicians make this this claim because they are hard-pressed to find legitimate reasons for supporting the death penalty. By now most people, even police chiefs, recognize that the death penalty does not deter crime. Part of my job in educating people about the death penalty is to inform them of the extremely tiny percentage of murderers who actually get a death sentence. Only 2% or less of the perpetrators of the 15, 000 yearly homicides are given the death penalty, and, of these, a much smaller percentage are actually executed. Now, after almost 25 years of practice, it has become abundantly clear that, despite the so-called neutrality in death penalty laws and the guidelines from the Supreme Court, which are supposed to assure that the death penalty is imposed fairly, in practice, the punishment of death is overwhelmingly imposed on poor people and especially on poor people who kill white people. When people of color are killed in the U.S., the death penalty is rarely sought. It is a sad fact of our racist history that white life has always been more highly prized than the lives of people of color. This has its roots in genocidal acts against Native Americans in the beginning of our history and in the practice of slavery, whose legacy continues to infect us today, especially in our criminal justice system. When we look at the geographic concentration of the practice of the death penalty in the U.S., we see that the same states that practiced slavery and lynchings and strict segregation are the same states that carry out over 80% of the executions. By way of contrast, states in the Northeast of the U.S. account for only one percent of executions. The wide disparity in geographical distribution of executions raises a legitimate, very disturbing constitutional question: how can a country, which claims to grant its citizens "equal justice under law" tolerate such a blatantly discriminatory system of imposing death.

When I witnessed the killing of Patrick Sonnier in Louisiana's electric chair on April 5, 1984, I left the execution chamber traumatized. Driving home afterwards we had to stop the car because I had to vomit. I could hardly believe that I had just witnessed my state government killing a human being in such a deliberate and calculated protocol of death. I realized that very few people were ever going to be allowed to witness what I had witnessed, and from that moment, my mission was born. I had been a witness so I must tell the story, I must be the one to take people on the spiritual journey I had taken so they could be brought face to face with government killing. In taking people on this journey from vengeance to compassion, I am careful to bring them over to both sides of the issue: the suffering of the victims' family and their search for healing on one side and the suffering of the condemned and his or her family on the other. I compare the two sides of the death penalty to the two arms on the cross, on which Jesus was crucified, and on this cruciform template I wrote Dead Man Walking, which was published in 1993. I know that what we must do to abolish the death penalty is to get people to reflect on the issue, and the only way to do that is to have massive public discourse. So, I rejoiced when Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon translated my story into a feature film, which was distributed in U.S. theaters in January 1996; and, after Susan Sarandon got an oscar at the Academy Awards, the film rapidly made its way around the world. In the year 2000 in San Francisco the operatic version of Dead Man Walking premiered, and is now traveling to cities in the U.S., even to cities in Texas, the execution capital of the U.S.. Just a few weeks ago the opera had had its first international venue in Adelaide, Australia. Opera is particularly powerful as an art form because it utilizes fully the power of both live drama and music, taking its audiences on an incredible spiritual journey. At the end of the opera the audience comes as close as they will ever come to witnessing an actual execution, which in the opera is carried out in silence. Presently Tim Robbins is working to produce the play of Dead Man Walking, which will allow it to be performed by community and university theaters, thus expanding public discourse exponentially. The wider the circle of discourse, the deeper the reflection; the deeper the reflection, the quicker we end government killing.

What's important in the educational process is that we help people recognize the human face even of those who have done terrible crimes. In helping people navigate their way through the issue of the death penalty, we must help people deal with the feelings of outrage they feel when terrible crimes are committed. In fact, we want to legitimize those feelings of outrage as morally legitimate feelings. Who can help but feel outrage when innocent human life has been wantonly violated? We must help people to get past the visceral response of an "eye for an eye" vengeance. Transforming hatred of an enemy into compassion is what lies at the spiritual core of all religions. Certainly it is the energizing heart of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Deep at the core of every religion is the belief in the sacredness of all life, the dignity that each being possesses, and that every human being is made in the image and likeness of God and possesses an inviolable dignity. And following the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Pope John XXIII's encyclical, Pacem in Terris, we hold that this dignity belongs not only to the innocent but also to those guilty of terrible crimes. Our deepest spiritual traditions teach us that no human being should be killed or tortured, no matter what crime they have committed. As Amnesty International puts it: human rights are inalienable; which means such rights cannot be alienated or separated from human beings. They cannot be bestowed by governments on people for good behavior, nor taken away from people by governments for bad behavior. From this it follows that the killing of human beings by governements can never be tolerated. New realization about these inalienable human rights is what has spurred on the dramatic disuse of government executions in the majority of nations in the world.

The death penalty is not a peripheral moral issue; it is the core paradigm of all forms of government killing. The basic components of the paradigm are: target an enemy, dehumanize the enemy, and kill the enemy. This applies to "street criminals" for domestic crimes and in U.S. foreign policy to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and endless other enemies around the world. It is military thinking, which knows only how to use violence to solve human problems. In this paradigm, demonizing the enemy is important because if we put a human face on the enemy it becomes impossible to kill him or her. And demonizing the enemy means elevating outselves to a higher dimension of morality. We are good; the enemy is bad. Without such dualisms the paradigm cannot function. President Bush recently framed the violence happening around the U.S. occupation of Iraq as a war between "civilization" (the United States) and "chaos," ("terrorists"). As the saying goes, when presented with a nail, a hammer knows how to do only one thing.
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To further public discourse on the death penalty I am presently writing another book, tentatively entitled The Machinery of Death. In it I tell the stories of two innocent men whom I accompanied to execution: Dobie Williams in Louisiana and Joseph O'Dell in Virginia. U.S. courts legally upheld these deaths, but the readers, learning of the ingregious injustices done these men during their trials, will be outraged when they read this book. This is healthy outrage because it is outrage at injustice. And, please God, these stories and the analogy of the system which they provoke, will add even further momentum to public discourse and debate on the death penalty. In this relentless discourse lies the hope and promise of ending the practice of the death penalty in the 21st Century. To this I give my life, and, in the spirit of Rev. Furukawa, Martin Luther King, and Mohatma Gandhi, I urge you to continue giving your life. It is a privilege to participate in such sacred, life-giving work. Thank you for your presence here today and for the work of your hands to further peace in our world.

REPORT FROM THE FRONT - AUSTRALIA
SISTER HELEN PREJEAN,CSJ

I try to follow where grace leads, and now its pulsing current brings me to Australia and the opera of Dead Man Walking. When the opera was first spun out, I did not know how I might be of service, but now I know that I can play a part in getting the word out about the opera by doing media interviews. It's a John the Baptist role. Marya Grathwohl, OSF, friend and fellow-adventurer is with me. In Sydney she and I gave a presentation to a group of religious -men and women - all doing great Gospel work with refugees, ecology, drug addicts, Aboriginal people, and prisoners.

When we arrived in Sydney on July 23 via Kuala Lumpur, Malasia, I hit the ground running with a kazillion media interviews, my Louisiana voice going via radio and t.v. all across the vast continent . During the interviews I don't have to summon energy for the words. Stories of the executed ones and the victims' families flow freely now. I tell the stories as clearly as I can and link them to the opera and the powerful way it unfolds the story of redemption. In Sydney I visited Long Bay Prison and met a young man, Geoff, doing 18 years, which means his crime must have been serious because 18 years is a long sentence in Australia. But happily he landed in a prison that restores human life rather than simply warehousing and punishing people. Geoff is learning drawing and painting, and has a teacher interested in him, a very great gift. I liked him immensely the minute I began to talk to him, his voice soft and his eyes with unsureness in them and sadness but full of energy as he talked about painting. We talked about talent, and I told him of the French writer Gustave Flaubert's definition of talent, that it's not so much genius as it is a long, long patience, and he sort of laughed when he heard it. He doesn't think he's very talented, even though his art teacher says he is. He promised to send me one of his paintings, and on the road I have already written to him. He is one human being, only one, and already bearing the burden of having committed a grievous offense against his fellows. But in the incredible twists and turns of Providence he and I connected , and I am coming to appreciate more and more our CSJ charism that spurs us to connect people with each other and with God. Whenever I travel to countries my hosts often arrange for me to visit prisons, which I am glad to do; and I found myself telling Geoff that I thought if Jesus were to visit Sydney, his first choice would be to visit people like him, not the Lord Mayor or other "important" people, which made Geoff smile and say that "myself and all the men here, really, perhaps don't have as high a sense of self esteem as we should." Cataclysmic understatement. Aussies are like that - understated, and they use a lot of diminutives in their speech, such as "sort of" and "a bit like" especially when they talk about feelings. They're a reserved bunch, and they talk at quite a clip. I have to ask them to repeat about one in every ten words they say. They put quite an accent on words and G'day is the least of it.

After three days work in Sydney, Marya and I in the company of Father Nick Lucas, OFM, traveled into the holy interior of Australia, called the Red Heart, where the ancient mountains of Uluru and Kata Tjuta are located. Over 70 per cent of Australia is desert and near the holy mountains the sands are incredibly red. Kangaroos are about, but the only ones we saw during full daylight were those on the side of the road, killed by cars. We did see live camels, though. Two were in the middle of the road, but skittered off as our car approached. We spent two days in the company of Aboriginal people, desperately dislocated now in modern life after sustaining life on the land for 30,000 years, the oldest surviving culture on Earth. We met Betty and Tahnia and Doris, who are working for the rights of their people to secure land rights. As with Northern Cheyenne people, alcohol is the ubiquitous enemy of Aboriginal people. For eons they had little sugar in their diet and so alcohol is lethal for them because their bodies don't have an enzyme to process it. No one can handle it safely, and it has brought great sadness, violence, and rupture into families and communities. We heard of some community leaders, mostly women, struggling to make their communities "dry," where alcohol is forbidden.

We sat at the feet of these women and learned about bush "tucker," food, which their forebears and some of them today know how to find in the desert: wichitti grubs,(fat, white worms, dug from the roots of certain bushes),kangaroos (big guys, the main source of meat: don't have to dig for THEM), wild bananas and figs, plums, and water in the most unlikely places. The new and growing edge of my spiritual life is learning to find God's face in Earth and the mysteries of science and evolution. The Great Work, according to Thomas Berry, is for us humans to learn how to live in a mutually sustaining way with Earth, not to continue recklessly exploiting and poisoning her. Thomas Aquinas spoke of two sources of divine revelation: the scriptures and the natural world. I have studied and prayed long with the first source, and now I am descending in my prayer and study to the second source. As I've said before, Marya and the Northern Cheyenne people are good teachers - and now in Australia, the Aboriginal people teach me, these incredible beings, who reach out to us with such love and are so willing to share their wisdom with us.

As I write this I'm in Adelaide and it's Willie Matthews' birthday, August 4, and I have a free hour before going over to the opera house for a few more media interviews and the dress rehearsal for the opera. There are banners all over the city announcing Dead Man Walking and across the front of the opera house is a huge banner, which stretches all across the front of the building. Stephen Philips, the director, has been working very hard to promote the opera, and keeps expressing how appreciative he is that Jake Heggie, the composer, and I have come to get the word out. They are sweet to me, and take care of my every need.

I fly out very early tomorrow to Melbourne to do media - in fact I am on the last leg of the journey there now, then fly back in the afternoon. There are some receptions that will take place in Adelaide, with the Lord Mayor, hosting a reception for me and other nuns who serve in the city. The Mayor's assistant heard that I was coming and persuaded the mayor to have a special gathering to thank the sisters for their service to the people. I'm amazed and delighted to see how the opera's performance in a city serves to highlight the precious and pervasive work we Sisters do.

There's quite a buzz in the city about the opera, made more timely by daily news about the death sentence recently given Amrozi, the extremist found guilty of the Bali bombing last October that killed 220 people, 77 Australians among them. Upon hearing his death sentence Amrozi smiled and raised his fist, which led to the headline: "Dead Man Smiling."

The opera opens next in Pittsburgh in June 2004, and Jake tells me that the next international performance will be in Dresden, Germany in 2005.

I get back to Northern Cheyenne Country in Montana on August 11 and will be writing away on the book, now tentatively called The Machinery of Death. That's how Catholic Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia described his role on the Court, that, when he joins his vote to four others on the Court he becomes part of the "machinery of death," and the image is becoming so central to the book that it will probably determine the title. The last chapter in which I analyze the constitutional issues of the death penalty has taken a long time. But Jason Epstein, my editor, tells me that time is not the important thing, quality of writing is, so I'm being content to work organically on the book and let it be born when it's ready, probably March 2004.

I'll return to New Orleans on August 28, and then my speaking engagements begin again, mostly in the U.S., but on September 5, accompanied by Eleanor Bernstein, I go to Aachen, Germany for St. Egidio's tenth peace gathering of world religious leaders. I've attended two of their other conferences, in Padua, Italy in 1997 and in Bucharest, Romania, in 1999. St. Egidio is a main collaborator of our worldwide Moratorium Campaign to end the death penalty. Mario Marazitti, one of St. Egidio's leaders, is responsible for the spirit and organization which has gathered close to five million signatures for a moratorium on the death penalty. He has enlisted my help in planning a human rights concert in the Roman Colliseum in 2004. I've invited Bruce Springsteen, who sang the title song, "Dead Man Walking" in the film to participate, so we'll see what hatches. Already the Colliseum, a symbol par excellence of state killing, is lit with a special amber light whenever a country abolishes the death penalty - now 111 countries around the world and growing each year. Our country, the U.S., is out of sync with most of the rest of the world on this, but we're working steadily to change that. Suddenly I looked around and realized that the abolition of the death penalty has been central to my ministry for almost 20 years, ever since, back in 1984 I walked out of Louisiana's death chamber after watching Patrick Sonnier's execution in the electric chair.

"Never leap ahead of grace," one of our Maxims says.
And so I wait for grace and try to follow ...
And now today, August 12, back in Northern Cheyenne Territory in Montana, the current of grace leads me to write this to you and then turn back into writing the last chapter of my book. After all the travel a quiet writing day is welcome.

Thank God for the Sisterhood, which sustains us all in our holy and good and privileged work for the Gospel.

Sister Helen Prejean,csj