“Butch, you’re back,” I greeted our receptionist his first weekend back after heart surgery. He smiled, sharing how lonely his physical recovery had been, acknowledging that emotional healing might take longer. Just then a man approached with his shy daughter. “She wanted to say hi to you.” Butch beamed. Let the healing begin.

Pray

Divine Healer,
The bleeding woman in the Gospel knew.
“If only I can touch the hem of his garment, I will be whole.”
Others knew too, so they traveled miles just to be near you,
for physical as well as spiritual healing.
Awaken me to those in my world who need a touch of healing.

Act

Are there people in your life—personal or professional—who are recovering from surgery or long illness? Take time to greet them with a smile, a question, a hug. Physically they might look healed, but they may need a lift to conquer lingering fears.

My third-grade granddaughter’s science essay delighted me: a picture of her pointing to her head and words that explained why her brain is the most important part of her body. She reasoned that no other organ affected all the other parts of her body. She vowed to use her brain to the fullest “so I can be as smart as my mom and dad.”

Pray

Creating God,
Too often I forget to feel wonder at your marvelous creations.
Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetic line sums it up:
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God”—
not just the physical world, but each human being—
from toenails to joints and muscles,
and, as my granddaughter reminds me, the human brain.

Act

Take a little time to rediscover God today: in the intricacies of a budding tree, the sweep of the wind, a smile on the face of a stranger, or in the creativity of a child.

While numbers in congregations of women religious are falling in the United States, Catholic sisters from all corners of the country are reimagining how to live out their missions in a shifting cultural landscape. 

Returning to Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati after COVID-19 restrictions, I took a walk on the nearby front avenue of the Sisters of Charity Motherhouse. As I settled into the serene mood, my walk provided me with lush hardwood and pine trees, inviting bird calls, and views of the winding Ohio River. So I was taken aback when I realized something was missing. 

Something big. 

In place of the 90-year-old Seton Hall, once a dormitory for coeds at the “old” College of Mount St. Joseph, there was . . . nothing. Straw covered the dirt where grass was being teased out of the ground. 

I had known for years that, like other congregations of women religious, fewer women were joining the Sisters of Charity, and there were more sisters retired now than in active ministry. 

The removal of Seton Hall—it was too old and expensive to update—was a concrete reminder that the sisters who had taught me in grade school, high school, and college were experiencing dramatic changes. 

Sobering Statistics 

Catholics who grew up in the 1950s or ’60s might be shocked to learn of the realities facing women religious today. When I attended a Catholic grade school, staffed by Sisters of Charity, we typically had one or two classes for each grade, most taught by women religious: Sister Joan, Sister Mary Christa, Sister Elizabeth Regina, Sister Hilda, Sister Mary Raphael; my only lay teacher in grade school was Mrs. Stocker. 

That was the postwar era, when Catholic families typically had six or more children enrolled in parish schools. And many of those students were attracted to religious life. In my family, three of the six daughters entered the Sisters of Charity, and one of them recently celebrated her entrance into the community 62 years earlier. 

“Sixty or 70 years ago, thousands and thousands of women entered religious life in the United States. That didn’t happen in earlier times,” explains Sister Carol Zinn, a Sister of St. Joseph of Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, and executive director of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). Today, according to data collected by the National Religious Retirement Office in 2023, 6 percent of women and men religious in the United States are 30 to 49 years old, 24 percent are 50 to 69, and 71 percent are 70 or older. 

Statistics from Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate reveal that, in 1970, there were 160,931 women religious in the United States, in contrast to 35,680 in 2023. 

A Worldwide Network of Sisters 

While laypeople like me are fretting over the loss of the sisters and “the good old days,” leaders of most US communities have read the signs of the times and see their shifting numbers and aging members. They are not denying that reality. Instead, they are “actively assessing their numbers and resources, then discerning a path that will assure a viable future for each member to live [her] vocation fully at each stage of her life,” explains Sister Carol. 

That’s where LCWR plays a vital role. The group represents approximately 66 percent of the 35,000 women religious in the United States from 294 congregations. 

LCWR “has no authority over religious congregations because each congregation is its own civil and canonical entity,” says Sister Carol. “We are trying to accompany leaders of women religious to engage in their reality so as not to miss the opportunity for new life and hope at this time of ongoing transformation of religious life.” 

So, for example, the generosity of LCWR members to accompany each other and share resources could mean that a chief financial officer or human resources administrator from one congregation might offer some service to another congregation. 

“The phrase global sisterhood takes on new meaning for women religious in these times of significant change and transition,” Sister Carol explains. “Walking together in mission and ministry is a hallmark of women’s religious congregations, in times past, in the present, and into the future as we journey together.” 

Sister Anne Munley, a member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Scranton, Pennsylvania, is associate director for LCWR’s Discerning Our Emerging Future Initiative. “We are not Pollyannas about the real issues,” she says. “We have assured LCWR members that no one is alone, though different congregations are at different points. God is on this journey with us. 

“Letting go is part of the organizational transition. Ministries formerly sponsored by a religious community will now move forward with lay leadership,” she says, adding that “some congregations will come to ‘historical completion’ just because their numbers are sharply decreasing.” 

Though these stark examples and statistics might startle lay readers, leaders of women religious congregations have been aware of the trend for at least 40 years. 

A Reorientation 

When Sister Monica Gundler, president of the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, joined that congregation in 1986, there were four sisters in her “cohort,” which she says was unusual; typically the congregation welcomed one new member a year. She recalls hearing the then-president of the Charities use the term diminishment about the size of her congregation. 

Even earlier, in 1979, Marianist Brother Lawrence Cada and other scholars explored the history of religious life over the centuries in a book titled Shaping the Coming Age of Religious Life. The 1984 revision was the result of collaboration among scholars from the Marianists, the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill, and the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. 

In the 1984 introduction to Cada’s book, he describes four or five years of the scholars meeting, researching, and drawing upon their experiences of renewal in each of their religious communities since the 1970s. 

What emerged was “an intriguing exploratory hypothesis: that religious life in America was undergoing a major transition, one that had been underway for at least 15 years, and which would take another 15 or 20 years to complete its major movements,” according to the book. “The magnitude of this transition would be major and significant, and perhaps would be viewed in the future as one of the most significant periods in the evolution of religious life.”

The authors went on to predict what contemporary women religious are now experiencing: “The transition would effect a deep reorientation in the way that religious would live in community and the way they would be of service to the Church and the world.”  

Reorienting is anything but simple or comfortable. Central to each community’s discerning the way forward that best fits their members and history has been a process LCWR initiated, where communities have entered into “contemplative dialogue,” explains Sister Jane Herb, former president of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Monroe, Michigan, and past president of LCWR. “This process helps us to create an atmosphere of quiet and to bring a listening heart. We respect and honor what each person is saying.” 

That listening involves all members, from the newest to the oldest. The newest member of Sister Jane’s community is 40-year-old Sister Jane Aseltyne. Before she made final vows in August 2024, she already had been invited to be a member of a committee for the transition, one looking at future ownership of their motherhouse. 

“It was a big property that we could not carry any longer,” the younger Sister Jane says. “It was a difficult decision but a sign of hope that we are looking to free ourselves from structures that are holding us from moving on.” 

Sister Jane Herb credits this change to “pausing and listening” so that the newest leadership team that emerged “is a younger face of leadership.” That’s another sign of hope for Sister Jane Aseltyne. “It feels good to see younger leaders. I feel represented,” she says. “The four members of our leadership team are bringing a new energy to our congregation. They were in formation after Vatican II and have had a wide variety of ministry experiences in religious life that reflect more of my own.” 

Investing in the Future 

Knowing that newer members of religious orders need to feel represented and heard is important to Sister Jane Herb and leaders of other congregations. In preparation for her presidential address to LCWR members at their assembly in 2022, Sister Jane invited four groups of sisters to have conversations with her about the future. One of these groups attending a town hall meeting with her were 24 sisters from Giving Voice. 

Giving Voice is “a peer-led organization that creates spaces for young Roman Catholic women religious to give voice to their hopes, dreams, and challenges in religious life,” according to the group’s website, Giving-Voice.org. The website explains the need for such an intercommunity group: “As women religious under 50 years of age, we are often minorities in our home communities. We yearn for peer relationships with other women religious. Unlike our sisters before us, a home-based peer group sits outside the realm of possibility, and we understand this aspect of our current reality.” 

As a conversation starter, Sister Jane asked, “In the spirit of Rip Van Winkle, if you fell asleep for 20 years, when you woke up, what would religious life look like?” When several Giving Voice members had to Google “Rip Van Winkle,” she noted in her 2022 address, “in a small way, this reminded me of the different perspectives that we bring to such a conversation.” 

“Hope-filled” is how she characterized the interaction with these women under age 50. Here’s what they envisioned religious life would be like in 20 years: It will be “intercultural,” “less institutional,” living the vowed life to “give witness within our global community.” Leadership will be “circular and mutual,” and “the focus will be mission-driven and not one of maintenance.” 

‘You Look At It, You Bless It, Then You Let It Go’ 

Those are the younger sisters, but what about those retired and aging? There are hard choices about their future. One of them involves the reuse of empty buildings. When Sister Jane’s order began looking to transfer its motherhouse to another entity, “a nonnegotiable [item] was that our sisters would be able to stay together, and they would have the level of care they needed: independent, assisted living, skilled care, and memory care.” 

The new owner of IHM Senior Living Community, Saint Therese Senior Living, also allowed the IHM sisters to keep leadership offices in the building, rent free. 

“For 177 years, the IHM sisters have been part of Monroe, Michigan, and we didn’t want our presence to be missing,” she says. “When we transferred ownership of the building, we let the Monroe people know ‘IHM is not going anywhere.’” In their deliberations about the future, the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati made a decision about some of their land holdings that are now enriching Cincinnati-area residents. 

Sister Monica remembers, “Fifteen years ago, I talked to a sister who was promoting the idea of donating some property for a land trust. I told her that when the time was right, sisters in leadership will make that decision.” The sisters’ gift of 75 acres to Western Wildlife Corridor (WWC) made the local news in 2023. It’s the largest gift in WWC’s 31-year history, according to a story posted on WVXU.org. Jeff Ginter, president of Western Wildlife Corridor, Inc., says in the article: “We’re thrilled. This is an extraordinary gift.” 

Sister Joanne Burrows, representing the Sisters of Charity leadership team, comments, “We’ve been lucky to have the land—to enjoy the land, to be responsible for its care and stewardship—and now we’re just grateful that there’s another group that we deeply respect to want to take care of this wonderful gift.” 

Passing on gifts of land and buildings is not always easy, says IHM Sister Anne, but the sisters are discerning and generous enough to know that it’s time. 

“You look at it, you bless it, then you let it go,” she says. 

In my rich conversations with six sisters from a variety of congregations, one Scripture passage has surfaced several times and explains the leaders’ surprisingly upbeat tone, given the decisions they are making. The quote from Isaiah 43:19 strikes the perfect note on which to end this account of courageous, joyful women embracing a radically new call: 

“See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” 

Web-Only Content

Meet the Future​

As a child “living close to the land” in upstate New York with evangelical Christian parents, Bethany Welch never envisioned that in February 2024 she would be professing first vows in the chapel at the Motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. She knew little about the Catholic faith or women religious, but as an art major at a Christian college, she was intrigued talking with a professor who was converting to Catholicism. And, in her studies, she was “immersed in Catholic art that was so different from my religious tradition where there were no images.” 

After college, working as an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer in Philadelphia, she was impressed by Catholics living their faith in a poor neighborhood. Many schools and parishes were closing, but the Sisters of St. Joseph, who had been in that part ofPhiladelphia for many years, stayed, reaching out to poor and immigrant neighbors. In 2005, after completing RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) in a parish where she was working, Bethany became a Catholic. 

​From 2004 to 2008, while she was pursuing a PhD and researching adaptive reuse of church property for community development, a priest mentor invited her to work in South Philly. Meanwhile, she was feeling a pull to examine life in a religious order, so she attended “Come and See” events hosted by several congregations. Should she choose to join one of those communities, she would have a lot to give up: she had dated,  been engaged, owned a car and a house, and was a foster parent to a young woman. 

Discernment was intense for this 45-year-old, especially given the shrinking numbers in the congregations. A key question she faced was “What if I’m the last person standing?” She wanted to be wise and prudent in making her decision, so she had many questions for the SSJ leaders: What was the community’s long-term viability? What financial structures were in place? Did they provide healthcare? Who would be her companions as the order’s numbers dwindled? 

Her discernment led her to commit to the  Sisters of St. Joseph. When she was with these sisters, “I didn’t hear them bemoaning the loss of an institution. When I was with them was when I felt most authentic,” she says. “I was with like-minded people sharing joy from a place of abundance.” 

Her years in formation have been alongside other young women from a federation of Sisters of St. Joseph congregations. She knows that someday she will probably live in a house in a neighborhood. Her community will “have a smaller footprint, have no institutional ministries, and work with our lay partners in mission.” 

Living a consecrated life, “to be radically available to God’s work,” appeals to her. So does the congregation’s willingness to “live what they believe, being open to ministry with those on the margins.” 

Describing herself as “a Pope Francis vocation,” she quotes generously from the Pope’s 2014 “Letter to All Consecrated People,” which includes these words of encouragement: “Embrace the future with hope. We all know the difficulties which the various forms of consecrated life are currently experiencing, [including] decreasing vocations and aging members. But it is precisely amid these uncertainties…that we are called to practice the virtue of hope, the fruit of our faith in the Lord of history, who continues to tell us: ‘Be not afraid…for I am with you’” (Jer 1:8).

I will end this letter of gratitude with a final thank-you for all that makes you a role model for me. Thanks especially for often reminding me to find grace in the present moment, something I aspire to every day, as I imitate you in my goal of being both holy and profoundly human. 

—from St. Anthony Messenger‘s ‘Dear Elizabeth Ann Seton’
by Elizabeth Bookser Barkley, PhD

“Grace comes and wakes us up,” says Sister Helen Prejean, who has dedicated her life to fighting capital punishment in the United States. “It’s what you do with it when it comes that counts.” 

“We’ve never even heard of Sister Helen Prejean,” my university students complained when they were assigned this religious sister as a presentation project. Their assignment: Research her death penalty ministry, exploring how she fought an injustice to promote the common good. 

The first resource to consult, I advised, would be the 1995 movie Dead Man Walking, which closely follows her 1993 book; the 2013 edition adds the subtitle The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate. The reissue celebrated the 20th anniversary of the book, which now has sold over 800,000 copies. To mark the 30th anniversary of the film, St. Anthony Messenger sat down with Sister Helen for an interview to remember the beginnings of her work with death row inmates and the publication and surprising bestseller status of her book and a highly acclaimed movie. 

One thing you have to know about Sister Helen is that, despite her international celebrity, she rejects any trappings of fame. For our interview, she sat in her office at home in the St. Thomas Project in New Orleans, in a neighborhood of low-income and joyful people. She described herself as “a Deep South gal born in Baton Rouge, who grew up in the Jim Crow South.” 

She had “a fantastic childhood, living in a big white house and had domestic help who were Black and lived in the servants’ house.” Only after years inside the bubble of religious life did she realize she knew no African Americans and had never interacted with poor people. 

At points in our lives, she reflected: “Grace comes and wakes us up. It’s what you do with it when it comes that counts.” 

Annunciation Moments 

Another thing that it helps to know about Sister Helen is that underlying her Southern accent and her contagious laugh is a deep spirituality. Above her desk are two religious symbols she reflects on regularly: a crucifix to remind her of the centrality of “the suffering Christ” in her life and a print of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation. Sister Helen is always open to “annunciations” in her life, sharing a favorite quote by St. Basil: “Annunciations are frequent; incarnations are rare.” 

When she was a girl, Sister Helen loved the story of the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary, announcing: “You have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.” 

“I’d say yes, too, if an angel appeared to me,” she remembers thinking. Her “annunciation moments” are always preceded by prayer and discernment to understand what God is calling her to. “I was called to move to where poor people were struggling,” she says. “Then I was invited to write to a man on death row. As I was answering those calls, I remember feeling I had fallen down a laundry chute.” 

Accepting an invitation to write to a death row inmate in a Louisiana prison took Sister Helen into uncharted territory. She had never been to a prison, much less a death row unit. The book and the movie let us in on the discomfort she feels as she meets the convicted murderer, Patrick Sonnier, in 1984. 

“On entering the prison the first time, the chaplain says that ‘these people’ are ‘the scum of the earth’ and I must be very, very careful because they are all con men and will try to take advantage of me in every way they can,” she writes in Dead Man Walking. 

The book recounts her conversations with Sonnier and her attempts to convince him to assume responsibility for the crime he and another man committed: the rape and murder of a young couple in a lonely wood. 

A Moral Imperative to Share 

Writing letters, visiting Sonnier, and praying with him led her to accept his plea to become his “spiritual adviser,” the last person to see him before he was led down the hall to his death by lethal injection. 

“After watching him be executed, I went outside and threw up in the dark,” she tells me. 

The emotional and physical trauma did not stop Sister Helen from accepting the next call she received. “I felt a moral imperative from witnessing something like what I had seen, so I began speaking to groups in public, whoever would listen.” 

She wanted to write about her experience but didn’t know where to submit her first writing. She decided to send it to the now-defunct Pacific News Service; its home page describes the news service as “a 25-year-old network of writers, scholars, eccentrics, and young people.” It published her two profiles, “one of the killer and one of the victim.” 

“I had never written a book and had no confidence, but [I] just wanted to publish this story,” Sister Helen says. She began writing more extensively about her experience with death row inmates. At a friend’s suggestion, she sent her writing to an influential New York book agent. Upon reading Sister Helen’s manuscript, the agent walked down the street and handed it to an editor at Random House. “You might be interested in this book,” the agent said. The editor recognized its potential as “a cutting-edge book, a personal narrative about the death penalty.” He predicted “it would be to the death penalty what Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring did for the environment,” Sister Helen tells me. 

That editor was right. After a massive media blitz by Random House, the book made the bestseller list of The New York Times, settling in for eight months. “We didn’t initiate an opportunity to turn the book into a film, but we waited for an invitation,” says Sister Helen. The next “annunciation moment” was soon to arrive. 

By 1994, the book was popular enough to be in paperback. “While actress Susan Sarandon was on set filming The Client [an adaptation of John Grisham’s book], a friend handed her a copy of my book, warning her not to start reading it that night because it was ‘too dark,’” Sister Helen tells me. “She stayed up all night reading it.” 

Sister Helen calls Sarandon “the midwife” of the film; “without Susan, it would never have happened.” Unexpectedly (or not, if you’re into annunciation moments), Sarandon was filming a scene from The Client at the New Orleans airport. She called Sister Helen to see if they could meet for lunch. After that meal, Sarandon went home and urged her then-partner, Tim Robbins, a well-known actor and director, to write a script for a movie. 

A Balancing Act 

It took nine months of Sarandon’s urging, and even tears, to get Robbins on board. He recognized this would be different from other crime and execution movies. “Those movies never descended into the moral dilemma of the death penalty,” Sister Helen says.  

“Tim knew he wanted the film to be art, not propaganda,” she says. “He showed both sides of the story, the convicted man and the victims (through their parents). . . . When the movie came out, Tim heard from victims’ parents that he had gotten it right. He treasured that feedback.” 

The movie received overwhelmingly positive reviews when it premiered in December 1995. In a January 1996 review, critic Roger Ebert noted: “This film ennobles filmmaking. . . . Sister Helen [in the movie] is one of the few truly spiritual characters I have seen in the movies. 

“Movies about ‘religion’ are often only that—movies about secular organizations that deal in spirituality. It is so rare to find a movie character who truly does try to live according to the teachings of Jesus. . . . This character will behave according to what she thinks is right, not according to the needs of a plot.” 

Since that review is 30 years old, I went in search of a current assessment and found it a few doors down the hall from my office at Mount St. Joseph University: Drew Shannon, PhD, is a self-proclaimed “huge movie buff and closeted film critic” who has seen and owns thousands of movies. After he heard Sister Helen speak at our two commencement ceremonies in May, he rewatched the film. 

He remembers seeing it in a theater in 1996, thinking then how good the performances were. He was once again touched by the “stellar performance of Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen. It’s the simplicity of her performance. She wears no makeup and is humble in every way,” he says. “She is able to perform as Sister Helen, both sure and doubtful at the same time.” 

He praises Robbins as “very accomplished at walking a tightrope of telling Helen’s story while taking into account the victims. Sarandon and Robbins could have made a preachy left-wing movie, given their own politics, but it’s surprisingly balanced.” 

The movie, calculatedly released just in time to be nominated for the 1996 Academy Awards, earned four nominations: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Sean Penn); Best Director (Robbins); Best Music, Original Song (Bruce Springsteen); and Best Actress in a Leading Role (Sarandon). Only Sarandon won an Oscar. 

Shannon praises Penn as the death row inmate Matthew Poncelet (the movie conflates two murderers Sister Helen writes about in the book). “Penn plays the role with such pathos, such humanity that we want to despise him but can’t,” he says. “In the film, he’s a tough guy, but vulnerable and beautiful when he opens up to Helen.” 

Declining Execution Rates 

It’s hard to make a direct correlation between Dead Man Walking and changes in capital punishment rates, but the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reports executions have been steadily declining in the United States, from a 1996 high of over 300 executions to under 50 in 2018. 

The public’s acceptance of the use of the death penalty also shows continued downward trends. For the first time since 2000, an October 2023 Gallup Poll asked respondents about the fairness of the death penalty, finding that more people (50 percent) believe the death penalty is not applied fairly, compared to 47 percent who think it is. 

“We have made great strides,” says Sister Helen. “Patterns are becoming clearer. In the past, juries were not given the option of sentencing felons to life without parole instead of to death. A Gallup Poll makes clear that a majority of Americans, given this option, would choose a sentence of life without parole.” 

She decries recent Supreme Court rulings that she believes indicate a majority of the justices “do not accept that killing people by using the death penalty is cruelty,” judgments that leave it to the states to decide about appeals to deny execution. She says most of the executions happen in pockets of former slave states. The DPIC reports these figures by region since 1976: South, 1,303; Midwest, 201; West, 90; Northeast, 4; and Texas alone, 589. 

A Pro-Life Issue 

Sister Helen has worked for years to get the Catholic Church to frame use of the death penalty as a pro-life issue. Her dialogue with Pope John Paul II paved the way. When communicating with the pope, she told him that when he “meets people who call themselves pro-life, they are pro innocent life.” She rejects that equivalency. “He told me in 1999 that he was thinking about it.” 

In a well-publicized statement in 1999 at a Mass in St. Louis, Pope John Paul II said in his homily: “A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. 

“Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary.” 

Sister Helen was hopeful about his changing attitude; she continued her efforts with Pope Francis. After several meetings with him, Sister Helen was thrilled that the Church changed its official teaching on the death penalty. 

In May 2018, Pope Francis announced this change to Article 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,’ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.” 

“That change finally happened after 1,500 years of dialogue,” Sister Helen says, adding that she has adopted French theologian Teilhard de Chardin’s wisdom, “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.” 

Her several books and the movie have enriched readers and viewers and have spun off other projects that keep pushing her message about the death penalty into the headlines. In 2000, an opera of Dead Man Walking, by composer Jake Heggie and librettist Terrence McNally, premiered in San Francisco and has been performed internationally. 

Another work still in progress is a graphic adaptation of Dead Man Walking. A longtime collaborator of Sister Helen’s, Rose Vines, is writing the text. The book, due out this fall, is being illustrated by Catherine Anyango Grünewald. 

Sister Helen remains committed to doing whatever she can to keep the eradication of the death penalty before the public. But she is 85. Near the end of our conversation, I ask, “Are you consciously limiting travel and public appearances as you accept the limitations we all face as we age?” 

“I am carefully discerning my priorities,” she answers reflectively. 

‘What Are You Calling Me To Now?’ 

She is collaborating on a book about Manuel Ortiz with Thomas L. Dybdahl, author of When Innocence Is Not Enough: Hidden Evidence and the Failed Promise of the Brady Law. After Ortiz immigrated here from El Salvador, days before he could become a naturalized citizen, he was arrested and accused of a murder for hire of his wife, Sister Helen explains. 

She visits Ortiz on death row and is motivated by his appeal to her, “Sister Helen, I just want the truth to come out about my life.” She is grateful that she’s got a major dose of zest. “I get energy back when doing what I am called to do,” says Sister Helen. 

Prayer and the spiritual life feed her. “It’s the source of all I do,” she says. Reviewing journals she has kept over the years, she notices a recurring theme: “What are you calling me to now?” At the end of our time together, she assures me she’ll stay energized and engaged, reinforcing her motto: “Live life to the full.” 

On a closing note, she adds with a twinkle in her eye, “It helps to be Cajun too!” 

She pulled up her photo file on her phone, excited to show me what she had seen on an excursion to a dark park away from city lights: images from a friend’s telescope. “There’s a nebula. Can you see a dark image of a horse’s head?” As she eagerly enlarged the screen, I gasped in delight at a million dazzling stars.

Pray

God of light,
Centuries ago, wisdom figures from the East followed your star
until they found you and your parents after your birth.
In times of darkness, drained of insight,
when I feel burdened and losing my purpose,
send a gentle nudge my way to remind me to look up for your brightness,
always there for me.

Act

Today, find an opportunity to bring brightness and strength to someone, whether it’s sharing a favorite photo, or reminding them how they enrich your life.