Acclaimed author and activist Sister Helen Prejean will make an appearance on the Hilltop this month for a dramatized reading as part of the Festival of Interfaith Arts at the Davis Performing Arts Center. The Nov. 23 performance will highlight Prejean’s book. “The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account to Wrongful Executions” (Random House. 2004) her latest in a string of works speaking out against capital punishment.“The death penalty lays bare the deepest wounds of our nation: our racism our assault on poor people and our ready instinct to use violence to solve social problems” she said. “We are not worthy of the death penalty. We are not worthy of this.”Faculty alumni and students will join Prejean on stage for the dramatic interpretation of her relationships with two death-row convicts their families and individuals on both sides of the death-penalty debate as time for their executions draw near. “Prejean is a remarkable woman who understands the power of the arts to effect real-world political and social change,” said Derek Goldman director of the theater and performance studies and Davis Center artistic director. Most noted for her book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States” (Random House. 1993). Prejean’s movement to abolish capital punishment began after she joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille. As a Roman Catholic nun dedicated to working with the poor in Baton Rouge. La. she began corresponding with Patrick Sonnier a convicted killer of two teenagers. He had been sentenced to die in the electric chair at Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. Prejean became Sonnier’s spiritual adviser when she began to realize the problems within the Louisiana execution process she said. Her conversations with Sonnier formed the basis for “Dead Man Walking. ” which became an Oscar-nominated film winning Susan Sarandon the 1996 Oscar for her lead role. Today more than 3,300 prisoners remain on death row in the 36 states where capital punishment remains legal according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. Since 1973 more than 120 people have been released from death row with evidence clearing them of conviction. Annually this amounts to an average of 3.1 exonerations per year. The Rev. John Langan. S. J. a philosophy professor and a senior research fellow at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics helped craft the 1981 United States Catholic Conference Bishops’ statement that declared the Catholic Church’s opposition to capital punishment.“Current Church doctrine says. ‘the death penalty represents an unjustified evil’ that disproportionately affects the poor and disenfranchised,” he said. “Art has an important and powerful function of presenting the very real moral complexities inherent in issues such as capital punishment.”The Festival of Interfaith Arts is presented by the Theater and Performance Studies Program in collaboration with the Office of Mission and Ministry. For three years the university has used the festival as a way to cultivate interfaith peace through performance while promoting spiritual renewal cultural exchange and a peaceful community through the arts. This year’s event also honors Rabbi Harold White’s 40 years of service to the Georgetown community.“The Festival of Interfaith Arts provides the university community with a unique lens into human and religious issues,” said the Rev. Philip Boroughs. S. J. vice president of mission and ministry. “(These issues) engage our minds and hearts and help us to meet each other with concerns of the world across faith and traditions.”
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