Over 800 Honor Slain Missionary to Brazil as ''Contemporary Martyr''
A U.S. missionary who spent the last 23 years of her life in Brazil helping to protect the rain forest and the people who lived there was remembered Saturday as a ''contemporary martyr''
A U.S. missionary who spent the last 23 years of her life in Brazil helping to protect the rain forest and the people who lived there was remembered Saturday as a "contemporary martyr."
According to the Associated Press, more than 600 people packed into a chapel at Mount Notre Dame High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a memorial Mass in honor of 73-year old Dorothy Stang, who was shot on Feb. 12. Another 200 people overflowed into adjoining rooms and watched the ceremony on televisions.
Stang, a naturalized Brazilian, protected the rain forest and peasants from loggers and ranchers in the area of Anapu--a Brazilian town of 7,000 on the Amazon's southern edge.
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Cincinnati Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk said Stang was "a contemporary martyr."
"The martyr is a witness--a witness to what God has in mind for his human creatures," he said, as reported by AP.
Brazilian authorities have charged four men in Stang's death.
