By Rita McInerney

She had been present at three executions, Sister Helen Prejean told an ecumenical, bilingual service May 16 as the National Pilgrimage for Abolition of the Death Penalty paused at Sacred Heart Church in Griffin.

“They are not heroes,” she admitted of her executed friends. “I don’t condone what they did. But they died as sons of God.”

Sister Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille, coordinator of the 400-mile march and caravan which started in Starke, Fla., May 5, called the pilgrimage “not just a protest but a journey of hope.” In the mixture of people making the march, she believes, “there is hope for the country.”

The march culminated “Lighting the Torch of Conscience,” a year-long campaign sponsored by Amnesty International, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the American Friends Service Committee, and the National Interreligious Task Force on Criminal Justice.

Taking part were relatives of victims, women with a husband or son on Death Row, former inmates, ministers, priests, Religious, young people. About them as they mingled with supporters in the parish hall was an aura of friendship, of family. Twelve days ago they had been strangers; now they were enthusiastic, tolerant comrades.

The prayer service offered several marchers a chance to address people from the Griffin community and from Atlanta. Among those giving testimony was Rev. Fred D. Taylor of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta. From the warm applause of his fellow marchers it was clear the frail clergyman was a strong force on the journey.

Reverend Taylor said he was “making a witness for those who do not have a voice…the disposable to whom society has said ‘you do not have basic rights.’”

Bill Pelke said his grandmother was murdered five years ago. Three years ago, he told his listeners, “Jesus touched my heart and taught me that love and forgiveness was the right answer.”

An ex-prisoner, William Gall, now associated with the American Friends Service Committee, said, “The church was very important in my reintegration into the community…God is not through with me yet.”

Magdaleno Rose-Avila spoke of being “transformed” through the influence of Cesar Chavez. The former farm-worker said, “We come looking for peace…we are making an act with dignity against death. We come looking for justice…The dream that keeps me going is what it would be like without the death penalty.”

Father Brian Pierce, a Dominican priest working with Hispanic young adults in the archdiocese of Atlanta, led the prayer service. Scripture reading from Hebrews 13 was selected and delivered in English by Reme Rodriguez of Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Atlanta. Jorge Breton of the Cathedral of Christ the King gave the reading in Spanish.

In his prayer, Father Edward Salazar, SJ, archdiocesan Vicar for Hispanics, mentioned the six Jesuits, their house-keeper and her daughter murdered last November in San Salvador. Sister Nachita, RFR, who ministers to Hispanics living in the Grant Park neighborhood of Atlanta, offered prayer in Spanish.

After the prayers, some children and youth of the parish lighted tapers from the large candles in front of the altar. They went among the congregation, giving light to the small candles each person held.

Soon, the last hymn sung, candles still flickering, everyone walked quietly from the church. Outside, in the starlit night, they formed a large semi-circle. For a few moments, everyone was quiet, savoring the sharing they had experienced.

A few days later, May 19, after a concluding ceremony at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change in Atlanta, the marchers dispersed, leaving new friends to return to their homes all around the country.

This 12th day had been long, beginning 20 miles away in Jackson where Death Row is located at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center. Once in Griffin, they found the city had denied them permission to march in the street. They had to walk on the sidewalk. This was the first time the marchers had not had access to the road.

Griffin Police Chief Armand Chapeau said the reason the permit was denied was to comply with the city ordinance which limits marches to Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday. “Their timing was off. If they had been a day earlier or a day later there would have been no problem,” he told The Georgia Bulletin.

He had a lot of telephone calls after the decision was reported in the Griffin paper May 10, he said. Most callers were protesting what they thought was a denial to permit the march at all.

Sister Prejean said one or two people in Griffin had waved small American flags at them as their way of expressing disapproval. Others gave the thumbs down signal.

In an interview before the service, she recalled the first time she saw a man put to death. It was April 5, 1984. Since then she was witnessed two others. She was in Jonesboro when another of her Death Row friends, Dalton Prejean (no relation) died May 18 in the electric chair at the state penitentiary in Angola, La.

She’s been involved with fighting the death penalty, with the poor and with victims of crimes in New Orleans, since shortly after her community, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, took a position on standing with the poor in 1980.

She first wrote to Elmo Patrick on Death Row in Louisiana. When she found he had no one, she began visiting him. “I ended up seeing him die. His last words were to me.”

Patrick’s execution was “transforming experience,” a moment she felt close to God. Now she has a “passion” for changing the reality “that the state is engaged in doing the very thing, killing, that we are trying to eradicate form society.”

For her the pilgrimage across Florida and Georgia, states leading the nation in the number of executions since the death penalty was restored in 1976, is a way of telling the Catholic bishops that “we’re joining you.” The U.S. bishops in November, 1980, issued a statement calling for the abolition of the death penalty.

She believes people “are beginning to learn how selective” the death penalty is in the U.S. Of 20,000 homicides each year, about 200 of those convicted are given the death sentence. All are poor, she said. “Eighty-five percent of the time the victim is white. When black kills black they don’t even prosecute,” she claims.

The death sentence, she insists, “is not worthy of us as a country.” Polls in nine states, she adds, clearly show that people choose life terms and restitution to the families of murder victims over the death penalty.

“Jesus is so clear,” she said. “If he had meant for us to only ask vengeance,” he would not have sacrificed himself. He taught that “all human life is redeemable, not disposable.”

The marchers seemed none the worse for their long days on the road when they arrived at Sacred Heart Church. There were about 70 that evening, Sister Jean said, and the numbers were “gaining every day.” One hundred and 50 started out from Starke. Some left after the weekend in Macon, Ga. where several services had been held.

They appeared sunburned and healthy. Most were walking anywhere from 10 to 20 miles a day, sleeping on wooden floors in country churches or in state parks. To avoid any confrontations, the leaders didn’t announce overnight locations.

Newcomer Jim Sunderland, a Jesuit from Denver, talked with Father Salazar. He had joined the march that day. On May 18, Father Pierce and two other Dominicans, Father Jim Campbell, from the Emory Catholic Center, and Father Bruce Schultz, of Rosedale, Miss., took part in the march in Atlanta.

Sister Memma Buggle, SND, chaplain at the county jail in Bridgeport, Conn., for five years, had walked seven miles May 16. Then she was allowed to caravan so she could do her laundry. She was one of four religious sisters in the core group that had started out from Starke. Along the way, “Some people were not happy to see us,” she commented.

“November” wore a jacket with “Wife of a Death Row Inmate” printed on the back. She told of reading an article written by a condemned man in the Catholic Worker. She was so impressed that she wrote to him. Later they were married in a proxy ceremony and have since adopted an Indian child.

The oldest pilgrim, Hanno Klassen, 70, a German professor at St. Olaf’s College in Northfield, Minn., spoke of being able to spend eight hours with a Death Row friend in the Atmore, Ala., facility, the day before the march began.

While he and the warden don’t agree on the death penalty, he mentioned how grateful he was to this official for allowing him to spend extra time with the condemned man.

Felix Marrero marched eight miles through Griffin with the pilgrimage on May 16. Parishioners at Sacred Heart, he and his wife, Maria, coordinated the potluck supper and prayer service at their church.

When the marchers arrived about 6 p.m. they enjoyed salad, spaghetti casserole, croissants and fresh mixed fruit. A lively crew of parish youth staffed the kitchen, presided at the buffet table, served beverages and cleaned up.

Eleanor Moyer, director of religious education at Sacred Heart, asked the Marreros to take on the task because she knew they “wholeheartedly support abolition of the death penalty.”

Felix Marrero said the family of five children, ranging in age from eight to 18, moved to Georgia from Puerto Rico seven years ago. He views their support for the campaign to end the death penalty as compatible with their dedication to the Marian movement, Schoenstatt, in which the Marreros have been active for 14 years.

“Through a covenant of love we invite the Blessed Mother to depart of our lives. She molds us, the talents God gave us, for service to the church,” Marrero said. “We learn how to hear God.”

Felix Marrero is preparing for ordination to the permanent diaconate and Maria serves on the council of the Hispanic Apostolate.

A few days before the pilgrimage against the death penalty arrived in Griffin, their oldest daughter, Ima, wore a T-shirt bearing the logo of the march to classes at Griffin High School. She took a lot of criticism from both students and teachers but stood up for her convictions, her mother said.

In Schoenstatt, her father believes, the “miracles are interior and there is a profound conversion.”