USCMA Celebrates All Saints Day All Saints Day celebrates all saints those officially declared “holy” by the Church and those countless men and women who lived saintly lives. This year we lift up three missionary martyrs from the US: Jean Donovan, Sr. Dorothy Stang and Fr. Stanley Rother (from left to right). Jean Donovan was martyred on December 2, 1980 in El Salvador. She was 27 years old. Born on April 10, 1953 in Westport, Connecticut, she graduated with a master’s degree in business administration and volunteered with the youth ministry in dioceses of Cleveland, especially among the poor. When she heard about the diocesan mission project in El Salvador, she followed her call to missionary discipleship to join the mission team headed to El Salvador. She joined the Maryknoll Lay Missioner program to complete her formation before she arrived in El Salvador. Jean was present during the assassination of St. Oscar Romero, and attended his funeral in March 1980 where thousands were seriously injured and killed by militarized forces. On the day she died, she was accompanied by three other missioners - Dorothy Kazel, Ita Ford and Maura Clarke – who were taken by soldiers in San Salvador and brutally killed. Sr. Dorothy Stang was martyred on February 12, 2005 in a rural area called Para, Brazil. She was 73 years old. Born in 1931 in Dayton, Ohio, she joined the Sister of Notre Dame of Namur around 1948. She began her mission in Brazil in 1966, working for the labor rights of rural workers and land preservation. One of her main campaigns was against the profitability of the rain forest, because politicians and other wealthy capitalists were destroying the rain forest despite its 20 million residents and ecosystem. As a result of her mission, she was added to a “death list” in the 1990s by power brokers, who targeted human rights activists, environmentalists and farmers; they sought to eliminate those who opposed the clear-cutting and burning of the forest as well as those who empowered and educated the peasants. She died nearly a week after meeting with the country's human rights officials about threats to local farmers from loggers and landowners. She was shot six times by two hitmen. Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura and Regivaldo Galvão have been convicted of ordering her death. She was posthumously awarded the 2008 United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights. In 2010, the Spirit of Sister Dorothy Stang Award was established to recognize individuals demonstrating her values: solidarity with the poor, care for the Earth, Catholic Social Teaching in cross cultural service, or teaching ministry. Fr. Stanley Rother was martyred on July 28, 1981 in Santiago Atitlán, Guatamala. He was 46 years old. Born on March 27, 1935, he was ordained in Archdiocese of Oklahoma City in 1963. Santiago Atitlán is a village of 20,000 Tzutujil [ZOO too heel] Mayans on the shores of Lake Atitlán. Fr. Stanley, commonly referred to as Father Stan, served 13 years as the parish priest. He drove his Chevrolet over 2,000 miles from his native Oklahoma to this mission sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. The bishops of Guatemala sponsored him for sainthood; now Blessed Stanley Rother was beautified on September 23, 2017. During his ministry, he visited families living in shacks, tended the parish farm, and learned both Spanish and Tzutujil. In 1980, Guatemala’s civil war brought the militarized forces occupying sections of the parish farm. In October 1980, a former deacon - Gaspar Culan – who produced the mission’s radio station, which advocated for human rights, was taken and presumed killed by soldiers. Father Stan wrote to Archbishop Charles Salatka, “I still don’t want to abandon my flock when the wolves are making random attacks.” A man of action, Fr. Stan reinforced the church and rectory with fences and locks. Nearly a week after he ordered the bodies of 17 Catholics indiscriminately gunned down by the army to be carried to the church for Christian burial—another pastoral duty that could be viewed as public defiance of the military’s terror tactics – the death squad targeted him and his assistant, Padre Pedro (who was granted asylum in the US). Three men arrived at the rectory, the morning of July 28th, and shot Fr. Stan. Saints are holy women and men who took up the cross of Jesus to be in solidarity with crucified people, freely spreading the divine love of God to the masses. These three missionary martyrs are powerful examples of individuals living out the Gospel. All holy women and men pray for us. .