105-year-old nun sends letters of encouragement to prisoners
A Minnesota nun who just celebrated her 105th birthday says age won’t stop her from her most treasured project of sending letters of encouragement to prison inmates.
Sister Mary Mark has been writing letters to prisoners for over two decades, and has implored others to follow suit.
"I surely do enjoy writing the letters and I've been doing it for many years," she told ABC News. "They're in prison, but they're working. They hope to make it. Other people have asked me for names, so that they could write to them [the inmates] too."
Sister Mary Mark, who has been a nun for over 80 years, originally started the letter writing project after responding to a notice in a newspaper enlisting pen pals for prison inmates.
Kathleen Conrad, pastoral care coordinator of Carondelet Village in St. Paul where Sister Mary Mark lives, says, "I think at one point she was writing to about 50 prisoners.
"When she was 89 years old she was called down to Oklahoma to testify on behalf of a prisoner on death row because she had been writing to him for such a long time."
"She says she just offers [the inmates] love and encouragement and let's them know that they're not alone," Conrad added.
The centenarian says she’d be happy spending many more years on Earth as long as she can still write her letters.
“As long as I can write, I’ll do it,” she said.
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