Julia Gets Wise with Sister Helen Prejean

Okay, let's say you buy some apples at the store. You're only going to have a rough idea of where or how they're grown. Maybe you throw the cores in a trash can. You're not thinking about where they're going, or you try not to. All in all, our relationship to our food can feel disconnected. One way I try to reconnect is by using my mill food recycler. Sure, mill has totally changed my home life in a lot of practical ways. It works automatically. You can fill it for weeks. It never smells. But this part is just as important. When I use Mill, I'm participating in a circular system. All the food I don't eat is helping to grow the food that I do. It makes me feel like I'm part of something bigger. And that feels really, really good. And it's all so ridiculously easy. I just drop my scraps in my mill and it transforms them into nutrient-rich grounds overnight. I have mine sent to a small farm, but if I wanted to, I could use them in my garden or for my backyard chickens, if I wanted backyard chickens, and I don't. And well, I don't know, maybe I do now. Maybe mill is transforming me too, just a little. If you want to feel more connected or you just want your kitchen to feel less gross? Try Mill's risk-free trial and just live with it for a while. Go to mill.com slash wiser for an exclusive offer. Hey, it's me, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. We are officially back with a brand new season of Wiser Than Me. To celebrate your out-of-this-world support for our show, we've been brewing up something special, a Wiser Than Me Mirror Traveler. It's a versatile, sustainable travel mug to keep your coffee hot and your tea cozy all year round. It's perfect for wise women on the go. Head over to wisethemeshop.com to grab yours now. Okay, here's the show. Lemonada. There are two things about living in Santa Barbara, California that I just love. One is that we live really close to the actual wilderness, so there are actual wild animals all around us. And the second thing is, up in the hills, there's a beautiful little Vedanta temple whose residents are all nuns. In fact, this was the first place in America that women took their final Hindu monastic vows. The temple has been in quiet use since 1947 up there in the rugged hills. where, God, we've seen coyotes and big buck deer and little bobcats and a ton of fox and rattlesnakes. And we've even seen a huge black bear. What we have not seen with our own eyes is a mountain lion. So we often walk our dog up in the hills. And one morning, our friend Tanya, who lives really close to the temple and has a great wildlife camera, showed us two just unbelievable video clips from the night before of not one, but two gorgeous mountain lions on their property. Now, you have to understand something. These are proper lions. I mean, like, you know, Serengeti lions that you would see out in the bush. You know, they're huge and they have that black-tipped tail, the muscled, tan body, those beady eyes, the teeth of an African lion. I mean, they are so beautiful. And let's not forget, dangerous. They are at the absolute top of the food chain. I mean, actually, I once, I had a park ranger tell me that if a mountain lion really wanted to kill you, you'd never see them because they're that fast and that stealthy and that lethal. We agreed with our friend that for a few days at least we'd walk in pairs up there and make a lot of noise, you know, just to be safe. So that same day, we walk a little further with our dog, and around the corner comes, no, not a lion, but one of the nuns from the temple. It was Krishna Prana, who was out for her morning walk. She walks every morning after morning prayers at sunrise, and we're always happy to see the nuns. They're funny and interesting and very curious. All of the nuns from the temple are getting on in years. They're all well over the wiser-than-me 70-year-old mark. Their convent is right below the wildlife camera that spotted the mountain lion. So we wanted to warn them that this creature was lurking and that she should spread the word to other nuns that they should keep vigilant. Just be careful, I said, because he's out there. and Krishna Prana smiled and said I know isn't it wonderful we were having lunch on Wednesday out in the garden all of us together and this giant beautiful line came walking straight through right in the middle of the day there he was oh I hope you get to see him and then off she went down the street toward the convent, just as cool as can be. And, you know, I mean, we were filled with fear, and she was filled with wonder. Hilarious. These nuns live a deeply devotional life. They meditate, garden, counsel, hold morning prayers, and vespers. Their exceptional order emphasizes that there are many ways and many faiths that lead to the same truth. They live in the Sarada convent named after the Hindu goddess of wisdom. They are, I think it's fair to say, professionally wise, and you can feel it even in just, you know, the friendly little chats that I'm lucky enough to have with them. So is it any surprise, really, that their contact with the lion felt just like a parable? They were having lunch, and the lion came to visit, and they were unafraid. I mean, sometimes wisdom and bravery are the same. In fact, I'm pretty certain they are the same. How lucky we are then to talk today with Sister Helen Prejean. I'm Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and this is Wiser Than Me, the podcast where I get schooled by women who are wiser than me. Today's guest is one of the most powerful moral voices of our time. For over four decades, she has stood witness to the darkest corners of our justice system, serving as a spiritual advisor to death row inmates and fighting to abolish capital punishment in America. Sister Helen Prejean belongs to the Sisters of St. Joseph, an order with courageous history. Its founder, Mother Jeanne Fontbonne, narrowly escaped execution during the French Revolution after five of her fellow nuns had already been killed. As you can see, courage runs in Sister Helen's lineage. Her life's work might not have been possible without Vatican II, the 1960s council that shook up the Catholic Church, pushed it to reckon with the modern world, and crucially, opened new space for women on the inside. Her 1993 memoir, Dead Man Walking, transformed the national conversation about the death penalty, recounting her experiences accompanying men on death row and providing spiritual guidance in their final days. It was adapted into the acclaimed 1995 film, earning Susan Sarandon an Academy Award, and Helen also just released a beautiful graphic novel version last October. Helen has accompanied eight men to their executions, counseled families, and founded the Ministry Against the Death Penalty. Through her advocacy, she's influenced the Catholic Church's position on the death penalty, which is now considered inadmissible in all cases. She's worked tirelessly and successfully, helping shape the moral and political pressure around capital punishment that contributed to President Biden's decision to commute 37 federal death sentences to life without parole and to reinforce his moratorium on federal executions. She really moved the needle. Well into her eighth decade, she continues this sacred, difficult work with extraordinary grace and an unexpected sense of humor. She's a truth teller, an agitator for mercy, and one of the fiercest advocates for human dignity alive today. This is one nun who is definitely wiser than me. Sister Helen Prejean, welcome to Wiser Than Me. Hey, what a great title. Thank you. I'm glad to be clumped into that category. Yeah. Although we got to see that you sound pretty wise so far. So let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. I think you're going to teach me a lot today. Are you comfortable if I ask your real age? Oh, sure. 86. 86. How old do you feel? I don't know how to tell you that, but there's a whole part of me that feels young because I'm curious and always learning and very engaged in creative change in the country. I think that kind of keeps you young, huh? Yeah. The curiosity keeps you youthful, I think. At least that's my experience talking to you. Yeah. You're always learning. Yes. And I do want to get to your life and to your work, but I'm really curious about something. What do you do for fun? For fun. And here's what I do for fun. Me with friends, we play this great card game, Louisiana card game called Beat Your Ass. I get together with friends with fixed meals. We just went out to the lake to take three days. I love to look at movies. I love to read books. Love to be with friends. I love to cook. I'm a good cook, Julie. You ever come to New Orleans, I'm a cook for you. What are you going to cook me? I'm going to cook some good stuff, like gumbo. I'm going to cook you some good gumbo. I'm going to cook you some good stewed chicken with rice. I'm going to cook you some red beans and rice. Well, okay. Not too spicy, please. You know what the secret of our Cajun cooking is? It's seasoning. It isn't just making stuff hot. Don't you be eating any Cajun food over at a Yanky restaurant because all they're going to do is blacken it and you're not going to know how old that fish is you're eating. Right. Don't do that. All right, I won't. I'm coming to you. When you come to us, yes. Well, how does Beat Your Ass work? Oh, it's really, the real name of it is called Polish Rummy, and it's basically gin rummy. Got it. Do you bet? I would love to bet, but they don't want to bet money. I think if you bet money, it always adds to the zest of the game. I do too. They don't want to do that. You've got to get friends who'll bet. You know what? I heard Maya Angelou when she was writing a book. When she'd come to our last chapter, she'd check in a hotel. And then in between writing, she would play solitaire, she said, to occupy her little mind. We got to occupy our little mind sometimes. Yes, we do have to occupy our little mind. I want to talk about your background, if I may, because I know that you had a childhood that you describe as very joyful. Yes. And that your mom, who was called Gustame Gustame It couldn't be more Southern You describe her as having a great sense of humor And being very charming And I think you had a lot of fun as a kid And I understand your dad taught you to argue He was an attorney, is that correct? Right, correct So talk about how he taught you to argue because that is a great skill set. Oh, it is. Yeah. And we also had a great high school, St. Joseph Academy in Baton Rouge, and our sisters taught us to think and how to do public speaking. So anyway, yeah, so with Daddy, honey, he said, you can't just do it on emotion. When you're arguing, you've got to know your facts, and you want to try to present them in a persuasive way. and whenever we had family gatherings or anything, Daddy would say, Louis, Louis, speech, speech. Let's have a speech from Louis. So public speaking. But in argument, you got to have facts. But the storytelling part of how you tell the facts, and maybe that has been the draw of Dead Man Walking. I hesitated to write a book for years because I thought, well, they have books out there. But they were books done by experts. They were statistical. Here's all the things wrong. And you need story. Yeah, always. So you got to know this, Julia. So while Tim Robbins was working on the screenplay of the movie, he kept saying, the nun is in over her head. And I was in over my head. Yeah. So the reader, when they go to read Dead Man Walking, they can see, I'm over my head, but I'm learning. And I think that's an attraction that leads people to read a book because they think, Well, the nun doesn't know what she's doing either. Let's see what happens to her. They relate to her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because who knows much about this thing, except we have these strong feelings. Look what they did and they ought to die kind of thing. And you want to get past that. Yeah. So Daddy taught me that about facts. He also loved words. They grew up on a plantation. They were very poor. And he had a dictionary. And every day he had memorized the words on that dictionary. So there was a love of words and there was always wordplay. It still goes on. Wordplay in our family, you know, of just loving words. Hey, what were their politics? Totally democratic in the good sense. I mean, like they were Roosevelt people. And they were, daddy participated in campaigns of governors that cared about the rights of Cajun people in Louisiana. And he had a heart because he grew up poor himself. But what they weren't conscious of was we grew up in a big house. So this is in the 40s and 50s, Jim Crow. And the only way I knew African-American people growing up was as our servants. I never went to school with black kids. I was never in social settings with black people. So it was only as our servants. And I never questioned Jim Crow. I didn't have a social conscience yet. And Mama would say things, well, like, honey, they like to be with their own kind. We like to be with our own kind. Interesting. And in my own realization, which I put in my memoir, my spiritual autobiography, culture really determines how we see things, how we hear things, what we see, what we don't see. That led me to leave the suburbs and live in the inner city in New Orleans. And then I really began to wake up because I met African-American people as my peers, as my peers. Was your family religious growing up? Yeah, very. Very. Very Catholic. Very Catholic. Yeah. And your brother and sister as well? Mm-hmm, very. Was anyone surprised in your family when you said, I'm going to be a nun? Oh, they were happy about it. They were happy? Yeah, because, I mean, super Catholic. They hoped they'd get a priest, maybe a nun. Oh. I just really never could picture myself marrying one little man, having one little family. I like wanted to go wide. Did you say want to go wide? Was that the word? Wide, in love, in being able to love a wide assortment of people. Oh, I see. Yeah. And you know it so funny that you for instance I have friends who are Catholic and they talk about going to Catholic school and they talk about the nuns like the nuns like the nuns were mean I sure you heard that trope before right Oh absolutely And the ruler nuns The ruler. Oh, yeah, the ruler. Right. Yeah, they had mean nuns. But you didn't have that experience, it sounded like. No, not at all. At all. Yeah. And I knew I didn't want to be a mean nun, and I love the kids I taught. Oh, yes, I'm sure you did. Absolutely. But you said that you were born with a kind of ambition. And you said that when you were young, you said you're either going to be president or the pope. So talk about that ambition. Although I think I know the answer. I've only talked to you now for 10 minutes, and I think I know. Where does that ambition show up now? I know the answer. I think we all do. Well, you wanted to do something great. Yes. So I did announce that to my eighth grade class. I'd just like to announce I'm either going to be the pope or the president. Y'all can mark it down. I'm on my way. Did everybody laugh? Oh, yeah. Of course they laughed. But let me tell you what nunhood taught me. Now, these are nuns before Vatican II. You have to understand. I know, which we have to talk about that. Guess what that did to ambition? Go become a nun. You are blindly obedient, whatever the spirit tells you to do. You're quiet. You never speak out of turn. You know, you're quiet. You're submissive. It played into the whole feminine thing, too, that women are passive. So the best way to be holy is to be obedient. I never thought when I entered the religious life, the Sisters of St. Joseph in 57, I was ever going to make another decision for my life again. I was only going to be an obedient man. Was that happy for you? Was that something like, I'm psyched about that? Yeah. Oh, I totally went into it. Really? I totally wanted to be holy. Really? I totally bought into it. Uh-huh. And the silence didn't hurt me. Learning to pray didn't hurt me. And learning to just give up my own will for a while to trust the wisdom of others did not hurt me. It could hurt you if you stayed in. But guess what changed it? Along comes Vatican II in the Catholic Church, the Reform Ecumenical Council, which changed things. And that's 1960 what? 2 to 65. Uh-huh. And it changed things for nuns because it was each person to discern how God's moving in your soul so that you could freely start to think, what do I want to do? What do I feel I'm called to do? And that's how I could have the freedom to get involved with the death penalty and to move into a poor neighborhood. What am I being called to do? like the decision to write the book of Dead Man Walking. Our provincial superior at the time was Barbara Hughes. She really had to stretch because nobody had written a book before. We didn't have a nun going on death row either in having these experiences. Right, right. So it entails sisterly trust that here I'm saying I need to devote a year or two to write this book. And she could trust me. So community is built on trust. So, before Vatican II, can you describe what wearing the nun's habit was like? Can you describe that for the people who are listening? Because I am just mesmerized by this. And rightly so. Yeah, talk. And rightly so. Because we had seven pieces of cloth on our head. We had the serrette, we had the bondo, you know, and then you had two veils. Then you had these long black sleeves. This is three and a half yards of black serge for the habit. What does serge mean? Is that a kind of wool? Yeah, it's a kind of heavy fabric. And that reached all the way down to your toes. In fact, one of our sisters was in a clothing store where they sold, you know, material. Yes. And she was standing there. Then she could feel somebody feeling her veil in the back and turned around because a lady thought she was a blooming bolt of material. And in the way we were, like a bolt of material. Oh, God, it was hot in the summer. Yeah, I mean, it was in Louisiana, was it not? Absolutely. You must have been boiling. We were. Picture two nuns getting on the bus in July in New Orleans. No. And one lady on the bus said, oh, look at the sisters. They like always fresh as daisies because we had white around us. And Gert, one of our really funny sisters, said, Kid, precious daisies, what's that rolling down my life? I mean, we were sweating like that. But here's the thing, Julie, when you go into a way of life, that's what was asked, leaving my mom and daddy and never being able to visit the family home. It was asked of you. And I just did it because I was in it, and I wanted what it would give me. So the unfolding and unfurling into real personhood that happened after Vatican II, it's just then all of me could really flower. Decision-making, discerning. Were you homesick at first? Oh, my God. I couldn't think of my mama dead. I had to say goodbye to them. And, of course, we cried all the way to New Orleans, all the way to the novitiate. And see, as Catholic parents, for them, they were giving over to God their daughter who would serve the church. And so it was a gift from them, too. And, well, it was just they could come see you once a month. And what did you have to talk about? I mean, you know, it was like we did the best we could, but I got very pious. I looked at, oh God, I looked at some of the letters I wrote home during the division. And Mom and Daddy, my high point of the day is going to Mass with our precious Lord and going to the Eucharist. It was so pious and out of touch. It's time for a break. More with Sister Helen Prejean in just a moment. And by the way, we just launched a Wiser Than Me newsletter where you can get behind the scenes details from my conversation with Sister Helen and more. You can subscribe now at wisertanme.substack.com. You'll get photos and videos, letters from me, think exclusive bonus snippets, glimpses behind the scenes of the making of the podcast, a real deep dive into every guest, plus a place to connect with other Wiser Than Me listeners. I hope you subscribe at wiserthanme.substack.com and stick around to see what we have in store. Be right back. Hey, Prime members. Did you know you can listen to Wiser Than Me ad-free on Amazon Music? Download the Amazon Music app today to start listening ad-free. If you're like the wise women on this podcast, you're really, really busy. 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I mean, once that happened, what did that actually mean in your day-to-day life? Well, first of all, huge arguments. Oh. Huge differences back and forth. Between the nuns, you mean? Yes, yes. Interesting. So here we are, the traditional life in the habit, for example. So now we're looking and saying the habit is a great symbol for people. We're dedicated to God. But in another way, it separates us from people. That's right. because they think of nuns like on a pedestal, holy nuns, so they watch what they say around you. That to really be with the people, and Vatican II had redefined the church so we were part of the people of God, so the decision was made. We need to dress like everybody else. Even Jesus didn't dress in his special little rabbi suit or something. I happen to be the son of God. I'm undressed special. Treat me with respect. But it was a huge, huge discussion. I mean, sisters that had lived the traditional sisterly life, now we're not going to be dressed like nuns anymore. I mean, it's like they felt we're losing it. We're losing our identity as nuns. It was fierce. It was huge. Yeah, change is so hard. Oh, it is. How did you figure out, like, even what to wear at that point? We went through a lot of revised standard versions of being a nun. I mean, at first it was just really simple, like a black skirt. And first thing we did was start taking up parts of the veil to show our hair. But the kids, man, the kids were going, hey, the nuns got hair. The nuns got hair. Oh, my God. It was just a lot. Hey, did you ever see The Sound of Music? Everybody saw The Sound of Music. I know. Well, I'm just wondering because I don't know what you were out and seeing. Did you like The Sound of Music? Well, of course I love the sound of music. But I'm going to tell you, at the end of it, I went, this ain't going to do much for non-leave vocations because she married a guy. And Sister Act was fun, too. But Sister Act had some good stuff in it. I love Whoopi Goldberg. Yeah, Whoopi Goldberg's amazing. You know, Pope Francis was a huge fan of Whoopi Goldberg's because of that movie. He loved that movie. No kidding. Yeah, he did. I hear Pope Leo likes the sound of music. Does he? Yeah. I'm kind of jumping around, but I did want to ask you another question about Pope Leo. I know you wrote that letter to Pope Francis about— Women in the church. That's right. Yes, yes. And he did not respond favorably to your letter. And will you tell our listeners what the letter was about? And then my question is, are you going to send that letter to Pope Leo, which I hope you will? Well, here's the thing. I mean, we can have all these discussions in the church now. Just like the death penalty finally changed, where the church came to the recognition, you can't give the state the right to take life because they'll set up their system. Same thing is going to happen with women. It's inevitable because we had our life experience can see that women have as much wisdom or more. And the point to Pope Francis in the letter was that you're depriving women's presence, their insights, their experience, and all the policymaking that's done in the church. It's all males, only priests, only bishops, making big policy decisions. So we're cutting off from the church a wholeness of wisdom that we can get from the women. women can't even preach at mass okay and i said look i've given talks before the united nations i've given talks in churches and synagogues but in my own catholic church i can't even proclaim the gospel it has to be a male to proclaim the gospel and i can't preach in my own church the way it's done is oh after the homily which only the priests can do women can give a reflection after communion. So it's beginning to edge in, but the reason it's ultimately going to prevail is just simply because women have too much wisdom. What's the title of your show? More wisdom than I got Well women of course are going to bring their wisdom to decision in the church and help make the church whole And as long as that deprived in the church of that voice and that wisdom we never going to be whole Because when all those little males get together and it's only little males doing stuff, not as good. Just get a few women in there. Well, I like that you say deprived because really the men are deprived. I mean, women are deprived, but then men are deprived of the wisdom of the other gender. And that's a huge loss for them. And that's actually why we're doing this podcast. Is it? Yes. Yes, because the whole premise is that older women in our society, particularly older women, become more and more invisible as they age. And they have all this wisdom to share. And so we need to put a spotlight on older women and hear what they have to say. Well, daggone. Well, yeah. You're on a good track, Julia. Thank you. This is a good track. Thank you, Sister Helen. So you were 40 years old then, I believe, when you did an about-face regarding social justice. Right. I woke up. You woke up. So can you talk about that moment in your life? I can. Please. So when you're in a community with experiences, we had sisters in Latin America where all the death squads were, terrible things were going on in Central America when Reagan became pope. I mean, when Reagan... Oh, no, please not. No, no, please. No. No, it's just this harsh policies because the big companies were exploiting the heck out of these people and getting all their... So the politics followed, and so we tended to support these dictators and Central American people were being killed. So our missionaries are there, and they come into our community meetings, and then beginning to share that consciousness with us just simply because the government is doing terrible things and you have to resist. So the bubbles start coming up in the discussion of the community towards social justice. And at first, I just went, you know, we're nuns, we're not social workers. I was doing retreats with young women. I was, you know, teaching in circles. And I wasn't immediately, yeah, we can all go and get involved in social justice. Then we had a conference up at St. Mary's, up at Terre Haute, Indiana, in the summer, and this nun came to talk to us. Her name was Sister Marie Augusta Neal, and she taught sociology and the New Testament. And she brought us into the gospel of Jesus, not just as a pious way of life where you pray for poor people and just say, oh, one day they're going to get a high place in heaven. Their role in life is to suffer along with Jesus. But she gave us something. She lit my soul on fire when she said, good news to the poor is not simply to passively abide by that as if it's God's will. This is a human system, and they have a right to resist it and struggle for what is rightfully theirs. And I sat in my chair, and I remember thinking, I don't know one poor person. I lived in the suburbs, and I was separated. Came back to New Orleans after that conference, began to get on the bus and volunteer and go into the inner city to work in an adult literacy place with African-American people. And that's where I had the experience for the first time. It was like there were two tracks. And if you were poor, you were on that track. What's a kid going to do, a young black man graduating from high school who can't read? What kind of job is he going to get? And I could see how it worked. Like, Julia, I had the recognition then it's not that I was so blooming virtuous, a good holy nun. I was privileged out the kazoo with resources all around me. And when I thought of all the times black people had been my servants growing up, I saw it rightly. I'm here to serve them and to do justice, to give back in some kind of way for all that they had given my family and me, that it was justice. And I'm so committed, see. I've seen so much, Julia. I've accompanied eight human beings to execution. And it's a secret ritual. Even when I was in Texas with Ivan Cantu, he was close to the 500th one executed. There were people in Texas that didn't know what was going on. Why do you think it's secret? Where does that derive from? Is it because? Well, there's a masking of death at a lot of levels. Yes. I just think on one level, it's compartmentalization and denial. Starting with the Supreme Court that cannot acknowledge that taking a human being and putting them in a small cage for 22 years, taking them out, rendering them defenseless and killing them as an act of cruelty. That's a masking right there. That's a compartmentalization. And the way they do that is when we look at all the atrocities that have happened when human beings have done cruel things. Is they turn a switch that this is a human being different from us. They demonize them completely. They're not human like we are. So we're justified in this because look what they did. They're othered. They're othered. Very othered. Very othered. Yeah. And it was at the heart of the conversation with Pope John Paul when I brought him through a letter, direct dialogue with him into the execution chamber and said, does the church, when they say they're pro-life, only mean they're pro-innocent life? When you take a human being down, strap them, render them completely defenseless and kill them, where is the dignity in that death? That was a key point with him and with the church, the inviolable dignity, not just of innocent life, but of people who are guilty too, because people are always more than a single act. We can never define a person by actions. We can never do that. But when you're working with the people who are on death row, does their innocence or guilt matter to you on any level at all? Well, here's the thing. I know how broken the death penalty system is. Yeah. I know the racism in it. It's so broken. It's so broken. I mean, you know why it's broken fundamentally? It's because of the Supreme Court decision and the way they set it up. You know how they set it up? Tell. Here's the criteria. The only people who deserve death, not your ordinary murders, only the worst of the worst. Who does Samuel knows what that means? Right. Well, my mother was killed. Well, it wasn't during a felony, so you don't call it the worst of the worst. Impossible criteria. Impossible. And it's coupled with inappropriate, indiscriminate selectivity on the part of prosecutors to go for death or not. Racism is built into it. And when you look at the history and the practice, over 70% of all death sentences today in the modern era is because you killed a white person. You have to care about the status of people when they're killed if you care about their life. 50% of all homicides are people of color. And I could see it happening in New Orleans. It's not even a blip on the radar screen if a black person's killed in New Orleans. but let a white person be killed, boom, it's front page. You can see the racism. And do you think you've made any mistakes in your work against the death penalty? And what have you learned from those mistakes? Yeah. Well, the first big one, and Jason Epstein, my editor, helped me with this too. When he looked at that first draft of Dead Man Walken, I avoided reaching out to the parents who had lost their children. And so Jason looked at it in my first draft of Demi Walken, and I said, you know, I just had never done this before. And so I avoided. I didn't want to add to their pain. And he looked me right in the eye and he went, Helen, it was cowardice, wasn't it? You were scared, weren't you? And I go, yeah. He said, look, when you write your book, write about the mistakes you made. Don't just take people on the tips of the waves where you do it right. That was a mistake. And when I did meet the victim's families at the pardon board hearing, it's public, and the victim's families were there. And that's where I met the father of the boy who had been killed. And he said, Sister Helen, where have you been? I haven't had anybody to talk to. He said, everybody around me is saying, you've got to be for the death penalty. He didn't want to be for the death penalty, but he didn't have me. It was a terrible mistake to have avoided him. And ever after that, I always reached out to people, the victims of the one that I was taking on death row. We have more with the inspiring sister, Helen Prejean, in just a moment. Spring invites a reset. Windows open, shelves cleared, only what's useful and well-made, kept in rotation. Closets can follow the same rule. Fewer pieces, better pieces, nothing wasteful. If it's not versatile, thoughtfully constructed, and built to last, it doesn't deserve the hanger. That's where Quince stands out. 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She's not there. She's not there. She's not here. I'm never going to hear her voice again. I'm talking about Chris's death. Not there. Gone. Gone. and so if you have faith which I try to have hopeful that there's a communion of saints and that somehow when people are gone from our sight they are not lost in the whole total universe of being so I keep talking to her but the amputation thing is gone it's gone, she's gone and the loss of it then I try to move to a place of being grateful. Well, thank God I had that friendship with Chris all those years. She was the first person I was really close to as a friend. And I write about it in River of Fire, about awakening to friendship. We can't make it without friendship. Boy, I'll say. What was it about her? Talk about how wonderful she was. What did you love about her? First of all, she was smart. She was really a meditative, thinking, reflective person. And we were very different. I'm outgoing, outrageously so. She was more of an introvert. So she balanced me. And she'd be the one saying, come on, we got to get away. We got to get to the woods. We got to get to the ocean. And really helped me do that. And then she was someone with whom, if you were reading a good book, you could share it. She was. She could share it. But the cancer hit her when she was young. And, I mean, she died at 59. She wasn't even 60. So when somebody has cancer, you can begin to see it coming. And just to try to be there for her and to bring her joy and to be with her through every stage of it. Yes. And it was similar to being with people on death row, of course, of being with them through every one of the stages when they're waiting to see if they get a stay execution out, when they're counting down the days. There's a similarity where death is the ultimate, however it comes to you, and there is a deep resistance in us as human beings to dying. I mean, to have the soul or the spirit leave our body. I'm afraid I'm going to be a coward, Julia. I hope I can be happy. That's interesting to me because I don't understand. I have to ask you, and maybe this is a stupid question, but you have faith. You believe in God and the Holy Spirit. So I would think that the idea of dying, is this silly, is less scary to you. When we approach death, the part of me that is afraid is the very human part of me. I am human. Yeah. And so then I have to go deeper than the fear. As everyone does that has to say, you got to go deeper than the fear. Yeah. You got to go deeper than it or you'll just be paralyzed by it. Right. And so what's deeper than the fear? Well everybody dies I no exception With my sister I very close to my sister And Marianne died She got a glioblastoma brain tumor Terrible. But she didn't suffer. She went to sleep. And she was always the tougher one than me. You know, I'd be the first one to cry if we had a fight or something. And I could hear her words inside me after she was gone. And it was, Helen, don't be a sissy. Everybody dies. You're going to die too. And like woman up to it. Don't be a sissy. And so it's like I don't have a privileged position that I'm going to be exempt from that more than anyone else. So resist, resist death, do everything we can. But then finally to say yes to it and it's going to be to surrender. So I'm praying for the grace to be able to do that. When I'm talking to people, it's at the human level. I don't talk much or make any kind of airy promises about life after death. I'm just saying you can do this, and we're going to do this together. I will be with you, and you have all you need. But like riding the wave of grace, we have a maxim in our community that says, never leap ahead of grace. You live in the present and surrender into the present, And then you go with the wave. So how does that, and this is fascinating to think about, but then what about people who are grieving? How do you help them walk through grief? Grieving is, it's happened and you've had the loss. Okay? Yeah. And first, you really do have to allow yourself to grieve. I realized after Mary Ann died, I was getting too busy. I was trying to do things, and then I had to just stop. I've got to allow myself to grieve. To feel sad. I have lost my sister to feel the sadness, to feel it, yeah, and to let it be in you and then to embrace it. And I try as much as possible to do it in solidarity with all the others in the human race that are grieving and grieving much deeper. I mean, I think of the people of Gaza and the genocide that's going on there against them. I think of so many people I knew in St. Thomas, like Virginia Carr. She had two sons murdered within six months of each other. People going through grief, real grief, and not having resources where they can't fight back. Because there's a danger in being a religious, a nun. Well, I'm like a cut above. I'm very spiritual and stuff. You're not. Just a human being and you experience it. And that was the gift of Jesus to us. What truths do you think that the world is refusing to face right now? And what truths give you hope? That we can change things by going to each other and speaking to each other and sharing our experiences. That's how over 1,500 years of dialogue in the Catholic Church, we finally changed the catechism because people were going into prisons, people were going on to death row, sharing those experiences in the wider body of the community. And consciousness changes and conscience changes, and we change things. That I know to be a fundamental truth, and it is the link to hope. Because if we're not engaged in helping make change to come, we're despairing at all the things wrong with the world. But we're paralyzed and unable to act. So when we reach out our hand to act, to reach out to another, no matter how small it is, we feel the life coursing through us. We feel it coursing through us. Reaching out to others and connecting with others. That's been a theme that comes up a lot on this podcast, and you do such important work. But I'm still wondering, in your downtime, when you're not working, you play cards and you eat good food and you hang out with your friends at the lake or at the beach, right? Yeah, and look at good films together, too. Oh, yeah. Films are wonderful. Aren't they good? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they can really take you somewhere. Have you seen anything you really like this year? Have you seen any good films? Fargo is one of my favorite films. Is it really? Fargo. Let me tell you, I can't believe you're saying that. It's one of my favorite films, too. Why do you like it? What is it about that you like so much? Well, first of all, I think it's drop-dead funny. Oh, my God. It is so funny. I love Frances McDormand in it. Oh, yeah, really? Love. Really? And there are a lot of actors, and it's shot so beautifully. It's just such a series of human mistakes on top of one another. Yep, yep. So it's got that great mashup. It's very violent, but it's strangely hopeful and funny, isn't it? And you know what? It triggered in me watching it because actually I've known a lot of people that end up in prison. They have a great idea for a crime. What can go wrong, right? So then you see Bill Macy pulls in his people. Okay, what a great idea. Can't get money from his father-in-law, so what we're going to do is have my wife kidnapped. Now, y'all be kind to her, but kidnap her, and then we'll get the money for the father-in-law to pay the ransom. What could go wrong with that? What could go wrong? It's such a human story, yeah. But you know what, too, Julia, in the making of the film The Dead Man Walk, and I learned about filmmaking from Tim Robbins, and you know the first thing you told me? Tell me. The difference between art and propaganda. So he's dead set against the death penalty. So, of course, you could shape your film that it's going to be a, quote, anti-death penalty film. You do the crime early on, people forget about it, and then it's all sympathy for the person and their family and all that kind of stuff. He said that's propaganda, but art. And he did a very brave thing. He talked about this. If you see Dead Man Walking. I know. I just watched it again. Did you? Yeah, I think I know what you're going to say. Okay, tell me what you think. What was the brave thing he did with the editing committee? I think the very brave and artful move he made was to show the complete brutality of the crime at the very end of the film. At the same time, they're showing the brutality of the execution. Am I right? Did I win? Absolutely. Everybody on the editing committee was saying to him, Tim, look, the audience has been through Matthew Poncel. They see him. He's remorseful now. He's asking forgiveness in the film there. You have the audience. And Tim said, I don't want to have the audience. And he juxtaposed the killing. So you see Matthew Poncel on the gurney. And then you see that he is raping and killing and participating. And he leaves the audience with that. And the theater manager said when they showed the film, people stayed riveted till the screen went blank. And they filed out in silence because they were thinking. They were thinking. And Tim was clear, we're not going to make it an innocent person. We want him to be guilty of a heinous crime. We want to do it by lethal injection because they're changing to a more humane way. And we're going to hit them at every moral pass because we've got to decide, is there a humane way to kill a conscious human being? A conscious, imaginative human being who can anticipate his death and die a thousand times before he dies. Do we have a way to do that? So he was brave. Very brave. Very brave. Very artful. Yeah. It really, well, anyway, it moved me. Okay, I'm going to ask you a couple of really quick questions, and then I'm going to let you go. But this has been a real treasure to have you here with us today to talk to you. I'm so pleased, pleased, pleased to meet you. Is there something you'd like to go back and tell yourself when you were 21? Oh, to be involved in justice and not just in that pious life, obviously, separated from the suffering of the world. Okay. Is there something you're looking forward to? The next thing, and this is the latest thing of unfolding in my own soul, is Manuel Ortiz is on death row in Louisiana. He's going on 33 years, Julia. He's 33 years on death row. and he's innocent. He's really innocent. And he looked at me during a visit and he said, Sister Helen, would you write a book about me? I need to get the truth out. They told lies at my trial. I never had a chance. Would you write the book? Will you write my story? That's an invitation. I'm going to let you go so you can get back to writing it because I believe even you writing that book. Before you go, I'm going to ask you to do one thing. If you could offer one blessing to those who feel overwhelmed by injustice, what would that blessing be? Don't go it alone. Reach out. You have neighbors and you have people. Reach out to others to be able to do something together. Don't go it alone. Those are wise words. Thank you. Thank you, Sister Helen, for speaking with us today. Carry on your beautiful work. Thank you for doing it. And you too, Julia. Thank you. What an honor it was to talk with Sister Helen. She's such an illuminating person. I'm very excited to hear what my mom has to say. Okay, let's get her on the Zoom. Hi, Mama. Oh, hi, love. How are you? Good. I'm not as good as Sister Prejean. No, you're just as good as she is. But she was amazing. It was incredible to talk to her, mainly about her work against the death penalty. Having said that, right now you look kind of holy because it looks like the star of Bethlehem is above your head. Is there a baby Jesus in that room with you? How'd you guess it? What is that? Where's that coming from? No, it's fine. It looks pretty, Mom. It's good. It's the light fixture. Wow. That's never been before. Yeah. Mom, didn't you ever want to be a nun? No. No, I never did. I went to a Catholic school when I was in the first grade, first and second grade. And I say it was not a good experience for me. And I never, ever wanted to be a nun. And when I first got on the bus, when I was in the first grade and went to school for the first time, I couldn't believe those women with those clothes. And all I could think was, what did they wear under it? Well, interesting you should say because Sister Helen was saying they wore three yards of black wool cloth as part of their habit. And underneath that were more things, long sleeves. She said they were sweating all day long, all day long. She said in July in Louisiana. Can you imagine it? I can't. The other thing is, is that she didn't, it was so funny. God, it was so funny. She, at one point, she said, I was explaining to her what the concept of this, the podcast is. And I was saying, you know, I speak to women who are older and to glean their wisdom and women after a certain age become invisible in our culture. And, and she said, what's the name of this show? More wisdom than I got. that's what she said isn't that hilarious more wisdom than I got is that the name does she have a southern accent oh she has a real New Orleans accent New Orleans wow well you know I thought about her today because I knew that you were going to be talking to her and it's amazing to be a nun that you are that all the time because Because we all have times in which we are good, you know, that we do good things and that we feel good about it. But then we – it's not that we become bad, but we don't – that's not like on our chart as being something that we do every day like a profession. And it's almost like professionally they have to be good. Yeah, I know. I know what you mean. But I think she might characterize it differently. I mean, she did talk about the reality of being a human being and that your one bad deed or many bad deeds or one good deed or many good deeds is not the whole story. And she talks about her work from a really compassionate place, like deeply compassionate. But she's saucy. She's got a lot of piss and vinegar in her. It's interesting. But you're right. I mean, her life is really dedicated to service big time. By the way, do you remember that your mom, my grandma Didi, had a neighbor, was her name Velma? Yes. Who was Catholic. And I saw that Velma would come, when I was with Didi, Velma would come home from mass and she had a lace veil on her head. And so I was like, I am going to Mass because I got to wear. And so I said I wanted to go with her to Mass. And she said I could. And so then I got to wear this, I feel like it was black lace veil that they pinned on my head. I mean, I think I remember it went on a little long, but I was feeling very, very good about my look. I had the right focus. It was very pious of me. Oh, you were just born to the calling. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, Mommy. So there you go. Love you. Okay, love. Such important work that you're doing. Oh, my goodness. I love you, Mommy. Thank you. I love you. Okay. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye. There's more Wiser Than Me with Lemonada Premium. You can now listen to every episode ad-free, plus subscribers also get access to exclusive bonus interview excerpts from each guest. Just tap that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, head to LemonadaPremium.com to subscribe on any other app, or listen ad-free on Amazon Music with your Prime membership. That's LemonadaPremium.com. Make sure you're following Wiser Than Me on social media, We're on Instagram and TikTok at Wiser Than Me, and we're on Facebook at Wiser Than Me Podcast. We're also on Substack at wiserthanme.substack.com. Wiser Than Me is a production of Lemonada Media, created and hosted by me, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. This episode was produced by Chrissy Pease, Oja Lopez, and Catherine Barnes. Rachel Neal is consulting senior editor, and our SVP of weekly content and production is Steve Nelson. Executive producers are Paula Kaplan, Stephanie Whittles-Wax, Jessica Cordova-Kramer, and me. The show is mixed by Johnny Vince Evans with engineering help from James Sparber, and our music was written by Henry Hall, who you can also find on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music. Special thanks to Will Schlegel and, of course, my mother, Judith Bowles. Follow Wiser Than Me wherever you get your podcasts, and if there's an old lady in your life, listen up. I don't care the sewer, seriously.