Over two decades ago, Sister Helen Prejean was just another nun in the Catholic Church in Louisiana trying to help the poor. Now she’s one of the most recognizable names in the debate over the death penalty.

Prejean became involved with a prison letter correspondence that led to her active role in the fight to abolish the death penalty.

Prejean spoke Monday on her experiences. About 150 people attended the lecture at the Hixson-Lied Auditorium in the Harper Center.

“Because I am educated, I could write a book. I can stand in front of you and tell a story or articulate what I think,” she said. “But when people are poor or are uneducated or don’t have health care, then they die early deaths.”

During her early years in the religious order, Prejean never felt the urge to help the poor in New Orleans. She said she woke up and took action after she began a letter correspondence with a man named Patrick Sonnier, who was on death row in Louisiana for killing two teenagers.

Prejean began visiting Sonnier and started her work to end the death penalty with the help of Colon Chava, of the prison’s ministry coalition.

“I was shocked because I couldn’t believe how human [Sonnier’s] face was,” she said.

After viewing Sonnier’s file, she was moved by the photos of the crime scene and decided to meet the victims’ families. Prejean said the father of the teenagers who were killed is the true hero of her book “Dead Man Walking.”

She said he wanted to be there to watch Sonnier die and wanted to hate the murderers, but could not. She prayed with him one morning and learned his opposition to the death penalty. .

“[The father] was my first teacher. He said, ‘I’m going to do what Jesus told me to do and forgive,'” Prejean said.

Prejean was with Sonnier for the last three days of life and looked into his eyes as he died. She simply didn’t understand.

“There is a belief that violence is redemptive and violence can only be solved by violence,” she said.

Prejean then began a fight to end the death penalty and had the chance to be part of the dialogue with Pope John Paul II in 1997, the year the Pope changed the catechism by stating the death penalty was wrong.

“When you have a chance to talk to the pope, you talk straight. I had 10 years of experience walking people down death row,” she said.

During her lecture, she pointed out two men in the audience who were on death row but were later found innocent. They are two of 139 people found innocent after living nearly two decades facing death.

Prejean urged people to get involved with this issue with an open mind.

“I ask you to dig into it,” Prejean said. “Make it part of your prayer, your intellectual evolution, and I invite you to make the journey with me. Enter into it. If you can tackle this one, it gives you a key to almost all the other social issues in this country.”

Those in attendance walked away with various ideas and views on the issue.

Laurel Gegner, Arts & Sciences junior, was one of a few students who was able to meet Prejean before the lecture.

“Having been at the smaller meeting previously and having a closer interaction with Sister Prejean, I gathered initially how vivacious and interested in this that she is,” Gegner said. “She’s inspiring with the way that she talks and the way that she’s able to convey her message about the death penalty is thought provoking.”

“I don’t think that [supporters of the death penalty] would have been swayed, but I think it would have made them possibly consider the other side because I think that most people don’t see it as that.”

Renee Reames, Nursing junior, said she went to the speech with an open mind and Prejean’s accounts of her experiences swayed Reames’ views on the issue.

“Using violence to justify violence is not the way that she articulated it is as far as trying to meet violence with violence,” Reames said. “I came in with 50/50. I didn’t have any reasons for or against the death penalty and listening to her say there’s no betterment that comes out of it for the family or even if it doesn’t affect you, still supporting the killing of somebody as punishment for killing someone else.

“She helped kind of change my mind on some things.”

Prejean ended her lecture with an exhortation: “Violence is never the ultimate solution.

“If you think you can’t really end the death penalty, that is because you have never been part of action.”