Sister Dorothy Stang “was Dot to her friends and family and Irma (Sister) Doroteia to the people in Brazil who took to calling her the ‘Angel of the Amazon’ because of her passionate support of poor farmers’ rights to the land and her protectiveness of the rainforest. Dorothy, a Sister of Notre Dame, devoted almost 40 years of her life to the people and land of Brazil. On February 12, 2005, two hired gunmen shot her six times thinking they had finally silenced this gentle, tenacious crusader for the poor.” (dorothystang.org)

Recent news from dorothystang.org, a website of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur:

NEWS from Brazil – 5/2/2010 – Rancher Regivaldo Galvao was found guilty of ordering the murder of Dorothy Mae Stang and sentenced to 30 years in jail. Sr. Jane writes, “The people gathered outside the courthouse at dawn, singing, praying and celebrating that for the first time in the history of Para, we have managed to bring everyone indicted for assassination of someone in a land conflict to trial, and even more convicted! His family, of course, is devastated…they were sure this would not happen….it never has. The people who came for the trial return filled with peace and hope to Anapu. Dorothy lives!”

4/13/2010 – A milestone victory: wealthy rancher Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura has been convicted of ordering the murder of Sr. Dorothy Stang and was sentenced to 30 years in jail. “This conviction sends a strong message to the other masterminds that the impunity is ending,”says Sr. Rebeca Spires, who has worked in Brazil for 40 years.

Related articles:

• Sister Dorothy Stang, SNDdeN: Sister of Notre Dame de Namur: Humanitarian, Mystic, and Martyr, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur website, Ask an SND
• Conviction of rancher over killing of US nun in Brazil, hailed, Ecumenical News International (May 3, 2010)
• Sister Dorothy Stang, New York Times (May 3, 2010)
• Brazilian gets 30 years for U.S. nun’s murder, Reuters (May 1, 2010)

* * *

Join the sisters for prayer today at 6 p.m. Central Time (check your time zone). Praying with the Sisters is a live podcast where you can chat with us and others in A Nun’s Life chat room. All you need is an internet connection and a heart open to prayer.

http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE

Sister Mary Daniel was a scholar, teacher and a woman of vision. She championed human dignity and justice for all; she was a strong advocate for those living in poverty. She confronted tirelessly the inequality of women in the Church and in the world. Her life and leadership demonstrate the power and influence of one person. Her prophetic message impacts religious and social change not only for this but for future generations. (from the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur)

Sister Mary Daniel Turner, 84, dies; led American nuns

By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 1, 2010

Sister Mary Daniel Turner, 84, the former superior general of the international Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and a national leader among Catholic religious women, died Jan. 27 at Holy Cross Sanctuary in Burtonsville. She had breast cancer that metastasized into bone cancer.

Sister Turner co-wrote an influential 1992 book, “The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters,” and was “a driving force for justice and church renewal before and after the Second Vatican Council,” which modernized the Catholic Church worldwide in the 1960s, the National Catholic Reporter said in its story about her death. In an interview last August with the paper’s editor, “the gentle but frequently provocative Turner lamented that Vatican clerics cannot accept women religious as moral agents.”

“I think the issues are wider than women religious,” she said. “It’s really a difference in values between the church of Rome and the U.S. church.”

Sister Turner appears in a video at the exhibit of “Women in Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America,” which opened Jan. 15 at the Smithsonian’s Ripley Center. Too sick to attend, she learned from another nun that the Vatican’s emissary to investigate American nuns had come to the opening ceremony. Sister Turner “simply suggested that her presence at the Smithsonian might be another opportunity for bridge building,” Sister Camille D’Arienzo wrote in an online memorial. “For decades, she had put her intellectual and spiritual gifts at the service of numerous religious communities. She was a visionary rooted in reality.”

She had ventured boldly into controversy before. In 1985, she was among religious leaders who, when asked their advice, urged a committee of bishops not to write a pastoral letter on women in church and society. The all-male, celibate hierarchy should not write about women without more extensive study, she and others said, noting that the bishops wrote a pastoral on economic justice, not poor people, and about racism, not black people.

While Sister Turner worked for female equality, she also “championed human dignity and justice for all; she was a strong advocate for those living in poverty,” the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur said in a news release.

Margaret Turner was born Nov. 21, 1925, in Baltimore and moved to Washington as a child. She attended Catholic elementary school and graduated from the now-closed Academy of Notre Dame, operated by the order she joined in 1943. She took her final vows in 1951 and graduated from what is now Trinity University in 1959. She also received a master’s degree in philosophy from Catholic University in 1962 and a master’s degree in theology from the University of Toronto in 1972.

She taught elementary school and was principal of St. James School in Mount Rainier in the 1950s, then was put in charge of newly professed nuns who were in college. In 1962, she became provincial superior of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, a province which at the time reached from New York to Georgia. Ten years later, she was made executive director of what is now called the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a group of about 1,500 top-level nuns who represent most of the 68,000 Catholic women religious.

Sister Turner was elected in 1978 to a six-year term as superior general in the Congregation of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, an international group with provinces in North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

After she completed her term, she worked with Lora Ann Quiñonez to write “The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters,” which reviewers described as “an important work that will enlighten and challenge.”

A prolific writer and lecturer, she gave commencement addresses in 1981 and 1989 at the Washington Theological Union. When Trinity gave her an honorary doctorate in 1984, it was because “in her unflinching search for truth she has empowered women to believe in the possibility of a transformed world that is inclusive, collaborative and pluralistic.”

In the 1990s, she was the administrator for Joseph’s House, a home for chronically ill homeless men. After her retirement in 1994, Sister Turner lived in a multi-generational, multiracial household where poor children who had attended the order’s schools came to live or to call a second home. She continued to consult with religious organizations until her death. (article source)

More on Sister Mary Daniel Turner in the National Catholic Reporter.

* * *

Join the A Nun’s Life community for prayer at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone).

Sister Dorothy Stang, SNDdeN, was a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur who was killed in February 2005 because of her work with and on behalf of the people of Brazil. She had lived in Brazil for over 40 years ago and worked with the Pastoral Land Commission, an organization of the Catholic Church that fights for the rights of rural workers and peasants, and defends land reforms in Brazil. The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur have a web page dedicated to Sister Dorothy Stang.

There was a lot of news coverage recently because one of the persons responsible for her murder was acquitted. Then this article came out about Sister Dorothy’s brother, David Stang — “Nun’s Dream Lives On” by Colleen O’Connor of the Denver Post. Though the story emerges from the terrible tragedy of Sister Dorothy’s death and the ongoing oppression of the poor in Brazil, it is filled with hope and with light.

Dorothy’s murder had a profound affect on her brother David. According to this article, the murder “thrust David — blissfully retired and tending his coin and stamp collections — smack in the middle of an international drama of land wars and death lists.”

[David] Stang, who is studying Portuguese, has traveled to Brazil nine times, attending all the trials. He has trekked deep into the rainforest to visit Dorothy’s grave and to sleep in the bed where she spent her last night….

Over the past three years, he has met with Brazilian politicians and embraced countless farmers who grieve the loss of Dorothy.

And he has worked with journalists from CNN and international newspapers to keep her story alive. A week after the murder, he traveled to Brazil with Denver independent filmmaker Daniel Junge to be part of his documentary “They Killed Sister Dorothy,” which won first prize at the South by Southwest Film Festival and will be featured this fall at the Denver Film Festival.

“I think it’s incredibly brave for someone in his stage of life to really put himself out there in the way he has,” Junge said. “I don’t think he planned to spend his retirement this way.”

The investment of time, however, helped the prosecution, said Brent Rushforth, the Washington, D.C., lawyer who represented the Stang family at the trials.”His presence as a representative of the family, and keeping the spotlight on the story, is one reason why the Brazilian guys have done their job,” he said….

Stang, who calls himself “the living spokesperson for Dorothy,” … vows to keep her legacy alive, even if it means spending time with people such as Henri des Roziers, a French priest in Brazil who, according to local journalists, has a price on his head of 100,000 Brazilian reais — about $38,000, or twice the amount allegedly paid for Dorothy’s murder.

When des Roziers invited Stang to attend the opening of a new school named for Dorothy in Xinguara, at the heart of the violent conflict, he didn’t hesitate. The trek included two airplane flights and a four-hour drive in a pickup truck on rutted jungle roads deep into the frontier, where he was greeted by hundreds.

“The workers wore hard hats and were standing at attention. The kids came out in their uniforms. Everyone sang songs. There were hugs and tears. If I’m a symbol of pride to them, then, yes, I’ll be there.”

Do read the full article in the Denver Post and check out the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur’s web page dedicated to Sister Dorothy Stang.