GUELPH Faith must be lived and shared.

Spoken fervently and affectionately in a Louisianan twang, that was the alpha and omega idea of a stirring presentation by renowned author and spiritual guide Sister Helen Prejean Monday in the city.

Prejean is best known as the author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States, which became an Academy Award winning film starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon in 1995. Prejean is a leading American advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.

Prejean agreed to be the spiritual adviser to convicted killers Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie in the 1980s coming to realize that neither man was the sum total of the worst thing they had ever done, but were instead capable of faith, honesty and redemption. Both died on the electric chair.

Prejean said after witnessing Sonniers death in 1984 she first vomited, then she resolved to fight for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States. She has not relented from that commitment since.

Speaking to a gathering of hundreds of Wellington District Catholic School Board teachers and staff members assembled for the annual Spiritual Development Day, Prejeans eloquent and moving stories of the death row inmates she befriended, prayed with, and walked with to their deaths, garnered tears, laughs, gasps, and a standing ovation.

Prejean, 73, is a nun, devoted to a life of spiritual service a life of living the example set by Jesus Christ. But for the first years of her life as a nun, she freely admitted, she was asleep spiritually, unmoved by grace, unmoved by the suffering of the poor and oppressed.

I was not awake, and when youre not awake, youre not awake, she said. We cannot enlighten ourselves, she said. We must be graced with enlightenment.

A person of faith, she said, is in a constant state of self-questioning, because faith is a moving, changing reality. And, she said jokingly, God is sneaky, sneaky, sneaky. There is no telling when the spark of grace will enter, or the path of service it will take you down.

What more could I do? How can I go deeper? How could I be happier? she said. There is all of this questioning of the spirit. Will I ever know Jesus, really know Him and live the Gospel of Jesus before I die?

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Advocate for abolition of death penalty gives stirring talk at Guelph gathering