• Early life: Stang was born in Dayton in 1931, the fourth of nine children in a Harrison Twp. family. She attended Julienne High School then entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, taking final vows in 1956. She taught elementary school in Illinois and Arizona before going to Brazil in 1966.
• Work in Brazil: She worked for nearly 40 years in Brazil. She helped impoverished farmers in the Amazon rainforest with ecological issues and defended them in tense, sometimes-violent land disputes with wealthy ranchers.
Credit: Lisa Powell
Credit: Lisa Powell
• Love for the Amazon: Stang fell in love with the Amazon. She loved the lush canopy of the forest and the way the crocodile eyes glow red in the dark. She loved the growl of the wildcat and the screech of the howler monkey.
And she loved the people of the forest — their resilience, their joy in the face of suffering.
“When they listen to the music long enough it gets into their bones and they begin to dance away,” Stang once said. “If you listen to it for a while it begins to vibrate even in your blood cells.”
• Village of Anapu: In 1982 Stang moved to the remote rural village of Anapu, Brazil, where she spent the next 23 years. There she organized a fruit co-op and helped the women build a factory that produced banana flour.
• Her death: Stang frequently had run-ins with illegal logging operations, land speculators, and cattle ranchers. She was murdered by hired killers in Anapu in 2005, at the age of 73.
VIDEO: A visual look at the life of Dorothy Stang
• The gunmen: Over a span of several years after Stang’s death, two ranchers were convicted of ordering Stang’s murder and two gunmen were convicted of carrying it out. There have been numerous appeals and retrials in the years since.
• New owl species named for her: A new species of screech owl discovered in the Amazon in 2021 was been named for Stang. The Xingu screech owl found in the Amazon was given the scientific name, Megascops stangiae, to honor her work.
• Relics to be displayed: The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Ohio said it has filled a reliquary with blood-soaked soil from the place of Stang’s murder in Anapu, Brazil, which will be installed in a church in Rome, Italy. The reliquary will be installed at the Sanctuary of the New Martyrs in Rome in coming weeks.
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