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Changing the law

New Jersey Catholic finds her calling in work as a tireless activist against the death penalty
By Stephen James

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eleste Fitzgerald has been uncomfortable

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with the death penalty for a long time.

It has always disturbed me, all the way back from when I was in high school, Fitzgerald said. But her direct involvement with the issue had to wait until after she finished raising her kids, coaching basketball at St.Patrick Catholic School in Chatham, N.J., and teaching CCD classes at the parish, three doors away from her familys home. During that time, Fitzgerald, 46, also worked for about 12 years as a real-estate agent until she was sidelined by a brain tumor. Although diagnosed as benign, the tumor required surgical removal and several months of recovery time.

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Celeste Fitzgerald speaks with a reporter after New Jersey issued a moratorium on executions this year. PHOTO BY JOHN GOODWIN

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the work paid off. This has been truly a six-year grass-roots campaign of speaking in church basements, community buildings, at Knights of Columbus meetings and those kinds of things. Just a lot of hard work, she said.

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A likable person
The effort also required education and arm-twisting at the state capital. Bill Bolan, executive director of the New Jersey Catholic Conference, credited Fitzgerald with the ability to be effective with legislators and at legislative hearings. I think she knows how to do this kind of work. ... Shes a likeable person, which, of course, in the lobbying game, is important, he said. Father Robert Schulze, director of the Office of Prison Ministry for the Diocese of Trenton, N.J., and a member of the NJADP executive committee, said that enacting the moratorium is significant not just for New Jersey but for the rest of the nation as well. Its big for New Jersey and its big beyond Jersey because its the first moratorium in the country that was legislated, he told Our Sunday Visitor. Father Schulze, who has worked with Fitzgerald for several years,called her tireless.She can be like a dog on a bone when she gets something that she wants to follow up with, particularly when its with one of the legislators who are potential supporters of the moratorium bill, he said. Shes a devoted Catholic who sees her ministry with the death-penalty abolition effort as very much part of her Catholic faith.
Stephen James writes from California.

Her calling
As a long time member of Pax Christi USA, a national Catholic peace-movement organization, Fitzgerald would occasionally get mail from affiliated groups at least thats how she thinks she ended up on Lorry Posts mailing list. She was still off work in 1999 when she got the letter from Post inviting her to a meeting of New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NJADP). At the small meeting , Fitzgerald was impressed by Post, a death-penalty activist and father of a murdered daughter who was trying to get NJADP up and running and enlisting other volunteers. Founding the group as a way to honor his daughter, Post set a goal of ending the death penalty in New Jersey. Fitzgerald signed on and never looked back.It sort of came to me rather than me seeking it out,but it was a fit,and the timing was amazing, she said. Seven years later, on Jan. 12, 2006, New Jersey Gov. Richard Cody signed legislation that mandated an immediate moratorium on all executions in New Jersey and created a commission to examine the states death-penalty system. Fitzgerald, NJADP and more than 200 New Jersey organizations campaigned relentlessly to pass the measure, and

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