A Martyr for Our Times: Dorothy Stand

Twenty years ago today, Dorothy Stang, a sister of Notre Dame de Namur, was slain in the Amazonian rainforest because her efforts to teach peasants how to farm in harmony with the Amazon Rainforest posed a threat to landowners and business interests in the region. These greedy individuals retaliated by placing a $19,000 bounty on her head.

As Stang stood before her assailants on a lonely dirt road, she reportedly reached for her Bible and calmly read from the Beatitudes. Her final words before being shot dead were: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice.”

At the time, I recall reading the news of Stang’s death but, being in the throes of parenthood, it had no meaningful impact on me besides a sincere but all too shallow offering of “thoughts and prayers.”

Still, the seed of Stang’s faithful action stuck with me and recently I began reading more about her life. One question she posed resonated deeply with me: “Did we make our lives so comfortable from reality that we cannot see the social sins that our silence is supporting?”

Stang died working to provide poor peasants sustenance and dignity, while simultaneously working to ensure humankind did not destroy the Amazonian Rainforest — a vital contributor to global weather patterns and one of the world’s largest sources of freshwater.

Last month, the Catholic Church honored Stang as “a new martyr of the Americas.” It is a fitting and well deserved honor. It was, however, Abraham Herschel, a Jewish rabbi, who reminded me that “a martyr is a witness to the holy in spite of evil absurdity.”

“Evil absurdity” continues to this day in everything from the continued destruction of the Amazon Rainforest to the threat to our own cherished and beloved Boundary Waters. So, too, do the myriad of “social sins” of which Stang so eloquently spoke — not the least of which is how we view and treat the world’s poorest citizens.

I realize not everyone shares my Christian faith but I would like to share with you the words of Richard Wurmbrand, a Lutheran pastor who was brutally tortured by the Communist Regime in Romania in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s: “There are two kinds of Christian: Those who believe in God and those who, just as sincerely, believe that they believe. You can tell them apart by their actions in decisive moments.”

Well, we are now living in a “decisive moment” and evil absurdities and social sins abound. Dorothy Stang — and her life and martyrdom — remind those of us who “hunger and thirst for justice” that are not called to stay silent but, instead, live our faith.

Jack Uldrich is the writer-in-residence at the Steger Leadership Center and an adjunct professor at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University.