World
Mission Sunday
Today is World Mission
Sunday. There are 1,100 mission dioceses in Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands
and areas of Latin America. On this Sunday, every parish has a special
collection to support the missions.
Our Bishop Robert McElroy
invites us to reflect today on the life of missionary Sister Dorothy Stang
SNDdeN. Sister Dorothy Stang was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1931 and entered the
religious community of Notre Dame de Namur right after High School. After
professing final vows, she taught at Catholic elementary schools in Illinois
and Arizona, but she longed to be in a foreign mission.
After teaching in the
Chicago and Phoenix areas for 15 years, she was finally allowed to go with four
other sisters to Brazil in 1966, where she worked in the Amazon region to help
poor farmers build independent futures for their families. She also sought to
protect peasants from criminal gangs hired by large ranchers who were after
their land.
Dot, as she was called by
her family, friends and most locals in Brazil, advocated for the peasants with
the police and the judicial system. Dot received death threats, and at one
point ranchers put a bounty on her head.
Knowing the danger she
faced, she decided to stay: “I don't want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the
battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They
have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can
live and work with dignity while respecting the environment.”
On the morning of 12
February 2005, Sr Dot woke up early to walk to a community meeting, when she
was intercepted and killed by two men, who had been hired by the executive of a
livestock company. Her cause for canonization is under way.
God bless, Fr. Carlos, OS
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