Dorothy Stang, Viva!

"Every several years she would move further into the woods," Marguerite Hohm said of her sister, Sister Dorothy Stang, SNDdeN. The woods was Brazil's rain forest. "Eventually she got to Anapu. My husband and I visited her there, maybe eight years ago. At that time, it was only a bus stop. Now that the loggers have moved in, it has become a pretty large city."

Dorothy kept moving "further into the woods" to accompany the Brazilian peasants with whom she lived and worked since 1966 as a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur. (That's what the initials SNDdeN represent.) In the early 1970s, the government of Brazil began giving poor people land in the forest to live on and have small farms. All was fine until recently, when huge logging companies found that many of these small farms were in their way as they harvested large sections of forest at a time.

"In the 1980s, Dorothy to realize what was happening in the rain forest, that the loggers were just stripping the forest as fast as they could." Sister Joan Krimm, SNDdeN, a life-long friend of Stang, told the National Catholic Reporter in a March 4, 2005 story. "She began studying ecology and law. She taught sustainable farming so that they peasants could far, and still not ruin the rain forest." And she fought--sometimes with and sometimes against--the government to make sure that everybody respected the land rights of the poor farmers. Brazil had recently allowed the large logging companies to resume logging in the Amazon, and Sister Dorothy wanted to make sure that the peasants weren't going to be forced off their land. Many of the wealthy residents of Anapu accused Stang of preventing economic development by defending the poor farmers. They believed that if the logging industry was allowed to do all that it wanted, the poor would eventually be given jobs and be better off. But having lived among them for forty years, Sister Dorothy knew better.

On February 12, 2005, she was on her way to a meeting with government and business officials in the state of Para to discuss land rights. According to eyewitness testimony, she was carrying her Bible as she was approached three men aiming guns at her. She told them that the Bible was the only weapon that she had, and she began to read from it. They shot her six times in the head and chest. She died immediately. Dorothy Stang SNDdeN was 73 years old. A native of Dayton, Ohio, she taught in several Chicago area schools before she went to Brazil in 1966.

The local newspaper reported that a business association in the Anapu callously celebrated her death with fireworks. But that snide "celebration" paled in comparison to the reverent memorial of Sister Dorothy's life that was held on February 15. More than 2,000 mourners followed her casket as it was carried through the streets of the poor part of town. She was buried on the banks of the Anapu River. Some years ago, she had begun an environmental protection program among the poor to help keep the river clean.

The Brazilian bishops' Pastoral Land Commission reports that 1,380 people have been killed in conflicts over farming and logging since the mid-1980s. The victims were poor farmers and laborers, and union leaders who represented them, and now, one Sister of Notre Dame de Namur who laid down her life for her friends.

The poor of Latin America have a custom. At gatherings, someone calls out the names of those who have died in service of the common good, and the crowd replies by shouting "Viva!" (Portuguese and Spanish), meaning "She lives!" "He lives!"
Dorothy Stang, vivo!

For more information on the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Sister Dorothy's congregation, contact Sister Gerry Bolzan, SNDdeN, Vocation Director, Chicago Area, 3000 N. Mango Avenue, Room 223, Chicago, IL 60634-5289; 773-237-6367 773-622-4636; 1-800-293-3453;

Catholic Connections

"We face a fundamental question which can be described as both ethical and ecological. How can accelerated development be prevented from turning against man? How can one prevent disasters that destroy the environment and threaten all forms of life, and how can the negative consequences that have already occurred be remedied?"
-- Pope John Paul II, "International Solidarity Needed to Safeguard Environment," Address by the Holy Father to the European Bureau for the Environment, L'Osservatore Romano (June 26, 1996).

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