Helen Prejean, C.S.J.

Doctor of Humane Letters

Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun and author, has been a leading global voice against capital punishment for more than three decades. She is known throughout the world for her writing and activism, which have sparked civic dialogue and helped shape the Catholic Church’s doctrine on executions.

A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Prejean joined the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1957 and later taught high school and served as the religious education director at St. Frances Cabrini Parish in New Orleans. In 1982, she moved into the city’s St. Thomas Housing Project to live and work with the poor. She soon became a spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, a death-row inmate in Louisiana. Two years later, when Sonnier was put to death in the electric chair, Sister Prejean was there to witness his execution.

She has since made it her life’s mission to speak out about what she saw and felt that night, in hopes of convincing others to work for the abolition of the death penalty. “It is not a moral peripheral issue; it’s at the heart of our society,” Sister Prejean once said. “We have to look at our society [and ask] what kind of justice is this … what kind of healing is this?”

In 1993, she published Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States. The book ignited a national debate on capital punishment and inspired an Academy Award-winning movie, a play, and an opera. Sister Prejean also embarked on a speaking tour that continues to this day.

She has shared her moral vision with Fordham students on several occasions, and she personally appealed to two popes—John Paul II and Francis—who later revised the Catholic catechism to strengthen language against capital punishment. At the time Dead Man Walking was published, capital punishment had widespread support in America, but today it has become much less common in the states where it is still allowed. 

For upholding human dignity and for her efforts to transform lives and galvanize social action, we, the President and Trustees of Fordham University, in solemn convocation assembled and in accord with the chartered authority bestowed on us by the Regents of the University of the State of New York, declare Sister Helen Prejean, C.S.J., Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa. That she may enjoy all rights and privileges of this, our highest honor, we have issued these letters patent under our hand and the corporate seal of the University on this, the 18th day of May in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty-Four.