Environmental Justice  |  Asia & the Pacific  |  Peace, Human Rights & Democracy  |  The Americas

Faith and Martyrdom in the Forest
 By Joseph Franke
Wednesday, March 9, 2005
 


When one's tongue is quiet, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you, tells you of its unreality, but the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly blazes transparently with the Reality of God. (Thomas Merton)

The death of Sister Dorothy was a crime foretold. (Bishop Jayme Chemello, president of the Roman Catholic Church's Amazonia Episcopal Committee.)

October 1991: On a muggy day in Bukidnon district on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, 35-year-old Father Nerelitio Satur, a Filipino priest deputized as a forest ranger, stood unarmed in the center of a muddy road. He was waiting for a truckload of illegally cut logs rumored to be on its way to a local sawmill. He knew that the loggers were armed, and possibly in the company of military personnel who are sent along to protect the business interests of their commanders and of corrupt local politicians. The truck arrived, and frightened but resolute, he halted the truck filled with some of the last of the region's old-growth rainforest, cited the loggers, and confiscated the timber. He must have known the chance he was taking. By all accounts, Father Satur was as intelligent as he was dedicated.

Satur was not the first priest to die in the Philippines trying to defend the forest upon which his parishioners depended for the basics of water and protection from landslides. At least 10 priests, including one each from the United States and Italy, were murdered by illegal loggers during the 1980s and '90s. . .
A few days later, Satur was driving his motorcycle when he was ambushed by three masked gunmen, less than one kilometer away from the chapel where he offered mass. One of the men smashed the butt of a rifle into the priest's head and then shot him point-blank with a shotgun. Satur was not the first priest to die in the Philippines trying to defend the forest upon which his parishioners depended for the basics of water and protection from landslides. At least 10 priests, including one each from the United States and Italy, were murdered by illegal loggers during the 1980s and '90s, along with at least 61 forest guards and other field-level natural resource personnel. Many more were, and continue to be, subjected to threats and legal harassment, including trumped up charges of rape and "subversion." Some of the murders were carried out in such a gruesome manner as to not be recountable here.

Fourteen years later, in February 2005, in the Amazonian settlement of Boa Esperanca, 74-year-old Dorothy Stang, a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur Catholic nun from Dayton, Ohio, was walking to a meeting of a community of 400 families of poor farmers to discuss a strategy to gain title to their lands and to preserve a large tract of nearby forest. For two decades, Sister Dorothy had been working with this and other communities in the lawless Brazilian state of Pará to protect them from the depredations of local cattle and timber barons and land speculators. She continued to work and travel widely in the area, despite continual threats against her life. In recent months, she'd repeatedly warned federal human rights authorities that she faced the escalating possibility of being murdered, and she was on a list of human rights leaders in danger of assassination that was produced by the Brazilian Order of Lawyers.

While on the road that day, she was approached by three gunmen, who asked her if she was Sister Dorothy. Witnesses said that she drew her Bible from her bag, and began reading a passage to the men. They listened for a moment, then took a few steps back and fired, shooting her six times in the head, neck and chest. She died instantly. Warrants were soon issued for four suspects in her killing: the gunmen, the man who hired them, and the rancher accused of ordering her murder. At the time of writing, no arrests have been made.

Despite the distance of thousands of miles between them, the murder of Sister Dorothy bears a remarkable similarity to the deaths of priests and other church workers in the Philippines. All have taken place in an ongoing atmosphere of social injustice and ecological destruction. Brazil has a long history of using the Amazon unsustainably as a social safety valve. The process works like this: poor farmers are run off of their land in the eastern part of Brazil by agribusiness conglomerates, and the urban poor from cities like Rio de Janeiro are offered land in the rainforests of the interior. Often, after the land is partially cleared, it becomes coveted by local logging and cattle interests. They violently push the farmers (who usually don't have title to the property) further out into the forest to start the cycle anew.

It seems a sad fact that social/environmental activists such as Sister Dorothy and Father Satur receive press attention in the U.S. only when they reach a violent end, if ever. . . And in Rome, no pope has ever beatified a person for their service and martyrdom in the cause of saving a forest. Perhaps it's time for the Vatican to start thinking about doing so.
One of the projects in which Sister Dorothy was involved during her 20 years of work was the large-scale sustainable development project approved by the Brazilian government to train framers to grow crops in an agricultural regime that left the forest at least 80% intact. However, local timber barons and ranchers have no interest in seeing the project succeed. Sister Dorothy realized that only chance of stopping this cycle of violence and ecological destruction is to give people title to their land and to protect the surrounding forests that moderate climate, maintain soil fertility and the year round presence of water. Those who have resisted the victimization at the hands of the cattle and logging barons are frequently murdered; at least 1,400 have been killed in Pará in the past 20 years.

The Philippines is a country where the dwindling forest, now down to less than one-half million hectares of the landcover of a country once covered by 30 million hectares, is used to line the pockets of politicians, army commanders and Muslim terrorists alike. And, as in Brazil, it is a country where the poor and most vulnerable suffer for the loss of the trees. In Brazil, despite the "in vogue" status that rainforests had in the '80s -- replete with boycotts of McDonalds and companies importing tropical timber, the ad campaigns of the Body Shop, and the temporary interest of such celebrities as Sting and Madonna -- the rate of deforestation in the Amazon basin has increased. Brazil has a land tenure system that allows land to be claimed simply through cutting the forest and putting some cattle on it, even though the thin tropical soils quickly lose fertility and are soon abandoned. The widespread building of roads, frequently paid for through World Bank and IMF loans, and the eradication of foot and mouth disease in the country has made Brazilian beef a lucrative if ultimately wasteful enterprise. Americans, Europeans and the emerging middle and upper classes of Asia now consume more Brazilian beef and rainforest timber than ever. Meanwhile, both the Philippines and Brazil remain lawless and corrupt.

It seems a sad fact that social/environmental activists such as Sister Dorothy and Father Satur receive press attention in the U.S. only when they reach a violent end, if ever. Like the death of the well-known forest activist Chico Mendes in Brazil in 1988, the deaths of Father Satur and Sister Dorothy focus short-term attention on the longstanding problems of environmental destruction and human rights. Then, as press attention wanes, the murders and corruption affecting their communities continue unabated. And in Rome, no pope has ever beatified a person for their service and martyrdom in the cause of saving a forest. Perhaps it's time for the Vatican to start thinking about doing so.

Father Satur and Sister Dorothy died protecting the forests that are essential to the health of their communities. They died because they acted upon the realization that the well-being of trees and of people are intimately connected, and that the loss of forest meant increased suffering for the respective communities they served. In many years of working with religious leaders on forest issues in various parts of the world, I've observed that the most dangerous thing you can do, as far as your personal safety is concerned, is to make the connection between social inequality and environmental destruction.

The corruption and greed that drive their killers does not exist in a vacuum. In part, they died for us, for our sins of over-consumption of tropical lumber and cheap hamburger.
In the U.S. there is an ongoing debate ad nauseum concerning the scriptural basis for dominion over versus stewardship of creation. However, it would be extremely difficult to argue with the idea that deforestation causes direct and demonstrable suffering to people. Landslides, loss of water, and loss of soil fertility have directly affected communities such as those served by Father Satur and Sister Dorothy. They felt that it was their Christian duty to stop the abuse of that which their communities depended.

In countries such as Brazil and the Philippines, where many elected leaders are either corrupt, cowardly or both, the church and other religious organizations constitute essential voices of morality when they call for the protection of those who are most vulnerable. It is essential that we support those religious leaders who risk their lives through their faith and a sense of duty. It is also essential that we take their example of sacrifice and dedication to heart, for we must come to terms with the role we in the industrialized countries played in the murders of Father Satur, Sister Dorothy, and many others who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of their communities and of creation. The corruption and greed that drive their killers does not exist in a vacuum. In part, they died for us, for our sins of over-consumption of tropical lumber and cheap hamburger. It is our responsibility to do better by their memories by defending the earth, and our most vulnerable sisters and brothers, no matter how far away they may seem from our daily lives.

What is the duty of a concerned person of faith? It is my contention that Father Satur and Sister Dorothy represent moral voices and role models for all of us, in their realization of the intimate connections between the conservation of God's creation with human well-being, and dedication and willingness to sacrifice. Both understood that it is the poor who are the first to feel the effects of environmental degradation, since they are less shielded than the wealthy from the ensuing hunger, water shortages, and soil loss that are the direct result of the destruction of the forests surrounding their communities. In Matthew 25, Jesus instructs us that on Judgment Day we will be judged in part on whether we care for him and serve him by caring for the poor. We must learn that environmental protection is one way of doing so, and one way in which our lives will ultimately be judged. If we take this to heart, we should find it morally repugnant to consume hamburger and buy plywood tainted with the blood of these martyrs and that of the communities they served.


Joseph Franke is the director of the Interreligious Council on Human Rights and the Environment in Wauwatosa, Wisc., and is presently working on a book focusing on the work of Father Satur and Sister Dorothy. He may be reached via email at consed@sbcglobal.net.