Sister Helen Prejean,  a leading national voice for abolishing capital punishment, announced Feb. 9 that she is donating her personal archives to DePaul University. Her archives include personal journals, notes from meetings, letters, speeches and other artifacts spanning a period of 30 years. The papers include her personal correspondence and manuscripts for her books “The Death of Innocents” and “Dead Man Walking”— the latter a best-selling account of Prejean’s spiritual relationship with a Louisiana death-row inmate that was the basis of an Oscar-winning 1996 film.

She said DePaul’s Special Archives and Collections will be a great fit for her papers. Prejean, 71, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, said nuns owe St. Vincent de Paul, the university’s patron and the apostle of charity, a debt of gratitude. “St. Vincent de Paul found a way to get the nuns out of the convent and into the streets to serve the poor. He did that in 1610 and paved the way for other religious orders.”

Full press release…