Rancher Who Ordered Murder of Sister Stang’s Arrested

By Dorah Feliciano, Contributing Reporter

BRASILIA, BRAZIL – One of the Brazilian ranchers found guilty of ordering the murder of American-born missionary Sister Dorothy Stang in 2005, Regivaldo Pereira Galvão was arrested this week after eluding police officers since February.

Galvão was convicted of ordering the slaying of Stang, better known in Brazil as Sister Dorothy, in 2010. He was given thirty years in jail, and arrested a year later, in November of 2011.

In 2012, Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court (STF) granted him a short-lived habeas corpus.

He was later arrested, but the courts reduced his sentence to twenty-five years.

Galvão was freed once more in May 2018, due to an injunction by Supreme Court Justice Marco Aurélio de Mello.

In February of this year, STF once again ordered the rancher’s arrest.

Two men involved are still free

Four other men were involved in the case, including rancher Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura (accused of plotting the assassination). All were tried and sentenced to jail terms ranging from seventeen to thirty years.

After fourteen years, however, two of the criminals are free.

The gunmen who shot Sister Stang – Rayfran das Neves Sales and Clodoaldo Batista – are serving sentences, although, in Sales’ case, for another crime not related to the Stang murder.

The assassination of Sister Stang brought to light the increasing violence against landless peasants and small farmers in the more remote areas of the Amazon region.

“The law of the strongest prevails in places where the state is not present, and when the struggle is between rural workers and farmers, it is easy to know who is the strongest,” said prosecutor Felício Pontes Jr. of the Federal Public Ministry last year in an interview to Galileu Magazine.

Pontes Jr. was one of the last people to talk to Sister Stang before she died.

An advocate for Brazil’s landless

A passionate advocate of rural workers and landless peasants, Sister Stang was killed on a rural road in Anapu, in the Amazon region of Brazil. Those who ordered her killing were upset about her advocacy work for better living and working conditions for the region’s poorer population.

A native of Dayton, Ohio, the religious leader was a naturalized Brazilian citizen and a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

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