Sr. Dorothy Stang

Sr. Dorothy Stang, SNDdN

1931 - 2005

 

 

 Dorothy Stang was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1931.  While still a teen, she entered the congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, an order of religious founded by Saint Julie Billiart to minister exclusively to the poor girls of peasant and farmer families.

After professing final vows in 1956, Dorothy was assigned as a teacher for fifteen years in the Chicago area, first at St. Victor in Calumet City, an area populated by working class families, and then St. Alexander in Villa Park.  St. Victor is closed but St. Alexander remains open.

In 1966, Dorothy began her ministry in the Brazilian rainforest which, then as today, was in danger of deforestation that was bringing poverty to the indigenous people and threatening the world with an environmental catastrophe.  She began by living with the local farmers, working the land with them while treating the soil with reverence and respect so as not to deforest and deplete.

Her noble, just and Christ-like intentions to protect the most vulnerable and poor was acknowledged by those she served but it stoked the anger of the corporations and wealthy landowners who wanted to enslave the poor in labor gangs and then destroy the Amazon rainforest. When Sr. Dorothy began openly advocating for the native people and denouncing the greed of the corporate giants, they decided to act.

In February 2005, Sr. Dorothy was murdered by assassins contracted by the  landowners on her way to attend a meeting addressing the rights of the Amazon people.  All she had was her bible and before she was shot six times she read her murderers a line from the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the merciful.” 

Sr. Dorothy Stang’s cause for canonization as a martyr is currently underway