A Brazilian rancher suspected of orchestrating the 2005 murder of Notre Dame de Namur Sr. Dorothy Stang, an American nun who spoke out against logging in the Amazon rain forest, will be charged in the killing and brought to trial following his arrest for land fraud, prosecutors said on Dec. 28.
Federal police arrested the rancher, Regivaldo Galvão, on Dec. 26 at his home in the northern Amazon state of Pará. He was accused of trying to use forged titles to claim possession of the same public land that Stang was protecting when she was fatally shot in February 2005.
Felício Pontes, a federal prosecutor, said documents believed to have been forged that were seized from Galvão contradict his earlier statement that he had no connection to the nun or her killing.
The case attracted international attention from human-rights groups and cast scrutiny on Brazil’s justice system, which has been plagued by corruption.
Galvão, along with four others, was arrested and charged in connection with the killing in 2005, but he was freed the next year after a series of appeals claiming he had no commercial interest in the land where Stang, 73, was murdered. At that time he was considered to be the “mastermind” behind the killings. Three other men were convicted and sentenced to lengthy jail sentences.
Pontes said that this second arrest of Galvão “shows that he had direct connection and interest in the lands that Sr. Dorothy died to protect.”
Edson Cardoso, a state prosecutor, said he would seek to have Galvão tried for the nun’s killing next month.
Stang, who was from Dayton, Ohio, spent 30 years trying to prevent ranchers from taking the land of poor Amazon settlers.
Her struggle and murder were detailed in the 2008 documentary “They Killed Sister Dorothy,” narrated by actor Martin Sheen.
Pontes said that film had prompted his office to reinvestigate Galvão’s existing land titles, which were mentioned by the suspect’s lawyer during an interview in the documentary.
Sr. Jane Dwyer, who works in Anapu in Pará and lived with Stang for 10 years, wrote to her U.S. colleagues Dec. 28: “Regivaldo swore that he would never again go to jail. He is there now, though no one knows for how long. May this journey toward a different world for the poor and abandoned continue.”
Members of the Ohio province of the Notre Dame de Namur Sisters launched a Sr. Dorothy Stang Project, headquartered in Cincinnati, which raises funds to continue her work in Brazil and to provide information and educational aids.
Sr. Elizabeth Bowyer, project coordinator, told NCR Dec. 29: “There’s a sense of release, that justice is finally being done. The men who actually did the killing are in jail, but we’ve felt that the real architects of her murder have never been brought to trial or indicted.
“This will mean so much to the people in Brazil beside whom Sr. Dorothy struggled. She loved them and died for them. It’s not about retribution; it’s about justice and truth-telling.”
Read more about Stang and her work: The legacy of an eco-martyr
(Rich Heffern is an NCR staff writer. His e-mail is rheffern@ncronline.org.)
