Sister Dorothy was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1931, one of nine children. She entered the community of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in 1948. After teaching in Catholic schools in the United States for 15 years, she was sent to the country of Brazil, where she spent 4 decades defending the rights of poor settlers who lived in the rain forest jungle. She advocated for better stewardship of the rain forest, seeing the destruction and deforestation caused by powerful Brazilian ranchers. On February 12, 2005, less than a week after meeting with Brazil’s human rights officials about threats to local farmers from loggers and landowners, she was shot by hired gunmen and left to die on a muddy country road. She was 73 years old. She was posthumously awarded the 2008 United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights. She has been declared a martyr for the faith by the Vatican.
Like the faith of the Syrophoenician woman in the Gospel today who crossed cultural and society norms to plead for Jesus to help her daughter out of her great faith for Jesus, many of the missionaries of our Church like Sister Dorothy Stang are great examples of faith for us through their perseverance against challenges and obstacles.
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