Sister Dorothy Stang gets school's first posthumous honorary degree

Published: 2006-02-07

DAYTON, Ohio (CNS) -- Sister Dorothy Stang, slain by hired assassins a year ago in the Amazon rain forest, has received the first honorary degree awarded posthumously by the University of Dayton. "We gather to recognize a saint in our time," Marianist Father Paul Marshall, rector at the University of Dayton, told a standing-room-only crowd of more than 300 people in the Immaculate Conception Chapel on campus Feb. 2. "Sister Dorothy laid down her life so others could live in greater dignity ... so the poor could melt the hearts of the rich, so that violence can be overtaken by compassion," said Marianist Father James Heft, chancellor and professor of faith and culture, during the invocation. A citizen of Brazil and the United States, Sister Dorothy worked with the Pastoral Land Commission, an organization of the Catholic Church that fights for the rights of rural workers and peasants. Born in Dayton, she entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and worked as a missionary in Brazil for nearly four decades.

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