Dreaming of being a missionary, Dorothy Stang entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur after high school. In 1966, Dorothy became one of the sisters from her community who worked in Brazil among people who were poor. Her work led her into conflicts over land in the rain forests.
Dorothy worked among the settlers to bring the Church with them as they followed the PanAmazon Highway into the jungle. The government promised settlers small plots of land. Dorothy visited homes and drew people together as communities to build pastoral centers and schools, support teachers, and learn how to farm in the rain forests.
Time and again Dorothy moved up the road with the poor, deeper into the jungle. She put up her hammock with a family of 10 for two years in one outpost. Like the people Dorothy suffered worms from the water and episodes of malaria. In village after village she taught the people about Jesus, their dignity as children of God, and their human rights.
Some call the rain forests “the lungs of the earth” because trees transform sunlight into oxygen and nourish our atmosphere. Thousands of small farmers worked the land in sustainable ways until multinational corporations realized the potential profit in the trees. Big ranchers also wanted more land.
Dorothy was undaunted by the clearing of the forests. Her education and faith, along with the support of her religious community, empowered Dorothy to speak out, to enable the small farmers to speak out, to protest deforestation, and to encourage sustainable farming. A born organizer, she helped form base communities throughout the region, assisting the people as they shared faith and prayer and ideas for resisting this takeover of their lands.
Dorothy often sat with coffee, a candle, and a cross, pondering the sufferings of Jesus and the sufferings of the people with whom she lived. She prayed for courage to keep walking with the people as threats escalated.
“It is faith that sustains me,” Dorothy wrote to her family.
Pope Francis teaches “the natural environment is a collective good” (Laudato Si’ #95). He quotes the bishops of Paraguay, “Every compesino has a natural right to possess a reasonable allotment of land” so the family can subsist (#94).
On Saturday, February 12, 2005, Dorothy’s discipleship ended. A man hired by a rancher confronted her on her way to a meeting and shot Dorothy dead.
- What call lives deep enough in you to commit your life to it?