In our celebrity obsessed culture our children might think that the only way to be successful is to seek out wealth, and fame, or at least notoriety.

Yet, all over this globe there are people who desire only to serve both God and the least among us.
These are the real heroes. And no one knows their names,,,,,



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PARA, Brazil (RNS) On Feb. 12, 2005, two hired gunmen killed Sister Dorothy Stang, 73, as she read aloud from the Bible in a remote settlement just off the Trans-Amazonian Highway.

As a tireless advocate for the poor and landless in Brazil for more than three decades, the Ohio-born nun came into conflict with ruthless landowners who tried to enact their own violent rule over swaths of the Amazon rain forest.

Round-faced and small in stature, with close-cropped white hair, Stang seemed sweet and provincial at first, but she was very clever and extremely persistent, friend and fellow nun Sister Rebecca Spires said.

“One day she slept in INCRA (National Land Reform Institute); the guy there wouldn’t receive her that day and she said, ‘I’m not leaving without seeing him,’” Spires said.

Three nuns from Stang’s order, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, continue to live in the small city of Anapu in the simple wooden house where the nun lived until her death.

On the 10th anniversary of Stang’s slaying, the nuns still advocate on behalf of the small-scale farmers, and the scourge of land conflicts in the Amazon has not been resolved. The Pastoral Land Commission, an organization founded by the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops and dedicated to combating rural violence, has documented 118 deaths in the Brazilian state of Para, where Stang was murdered, since 2005. For every instance of killing, there are numerous instances of harassment, forced evictions of settlers, threats and physical violence.
http://www.religionnews.com/2015/02/12/sister-dorothy-stang-died-fighting-brazils-landless-10-years-later-not-much-changed/

Last edited by Goose (2/14/2015 2:16 pm)