HCH photo by Anna Weaver

Prison reform activist Sister Helen Prejean talks with prison ministers in the Mystical Rose Oratory on the Chaminade campus on March 12.

Three dozen prison ministry volunteers of different faiths gathered at Chaminade University of Honolulu on March 12 to listen to prison reform activist Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille Helen Prejean.

Sister Helen, best known for her book Dead Man Walking and the movie based on it, was in Hawaii for three days. On March 11 she spoke to a standing room-only crowd in Chaminade’s Mystical Rose Oratory as part of the Mackey Marianist Lecture Series.

The next day she also spoke to Sacred Hearts Academy and St. Louis School students before her evening meeting with about 35 volunteers in the Mystical Rose Oratory.

Sister Helen opened her 40-minute talk by speaking about an inmate with whom she worked who went from using his fists to survive in prison to educating himself behind bars. She said he was an example of the “difference it makes in just having somebody to teach you” and not treat you like “disposable human waste.”

“To me it is quintessentially what the Gospel of Jesus is about,” Sister Helen said. “That’s what Jesus was always doing, being on the side of people that other people were considering the throwaways.”

Sister Helen touched on a number of subjects. She discussed politicians pushing for harder sentencing to get points with voters, the ways that God leads people down different paths than they expected, and the need for prisoners just to have someone with whom to talk.

She also called attention to the fact that the majority of people on death row in the United States are poor, minorities, and from a state that used to have slavery.

“If your life is non-consequential, your death is non-consequential,” she said, describing an attitude she said seems to prevail in America.

After her talk Sister Helen opened up the floor for discussion and asked people to share their experiences in prison ministry. What followed was a lively hour-long conversation about the difficulties and rewards of working with inmates and their families.

At the end of the evening Sister Helen encouraged the volunteers, who were from Catholic, nondenominational Christian, and nonreligious groups, to meet more frequently together so they could support each other in their work.

Lani Matanane, a prison ministry volunteer from St. Jude Parish in Kapolei, said she was glad that Hawaii does not have capital punishment. She said she came away from Sister Helen’s talk with the message “that these so-called prisoners are human and they deserve to hear the good news that life can be better if they center their lives on Christ.”

Etta Lyman, the chaplain at Waiawa Correctional Facility said, “A lot of what [Sister Helen] talked about is what I’m actually doing.” She also recognized the fact that the poor often make up the majority of prisoners.

Lyman also works with runaway children, adding that, by coincidence, some of their parents are inmates she sees in her prison ministry.

While in Hawaii, Sister Helen also managed to squeeze in a visit to a North Shore beach before leaving early on March 13.