Stang had been outspoken in her efforts on behalf of the poor and the environment and had previously received death threats from loggers and landowners.

Born on June 7, 1931, in Dayton, Ohio, but naturalized Brazilian,[2] she entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur community in 1948 and professed final vows in 1956.

She worked as an advocate for the rural poor beginning in the early 1970s, helping peasants make a living by farming small plots and extracting forest products without deforestation.

She progressed on and was blocked by the two men, Clodoaldo Carlos Batista and Raifran das Neves Sales, who worked in a livestock company.

She then read a passage from the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor in spirit ..." She continued a couple of steps but was suddenly stopped when Ciero called her "sister", as she was held at gunpoint by Raifran.

The US Attorney's Office, Transnational Crime Unit, in Washington, DC, pursued an indictment of the four people (three in custody, one at large) under Title 18, USC 2332, a statute on international homicide.

[citation needed] On May 15, 2007, a court in the city of Belém sentenced Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, aged 36, to the maximum term of 30 years in prison for paying gunmen to shoot Stang.

In a second trial, Moura was acquitted of all charges, because the gunman, Rayfran das Neves Sales, declared in court to have killed Dorothy Stang for personal motivation.

[citation needed] Regivaldo Pereira Galvão, a rancher suspected of ordering the killing, was arrested in December 2008 and was to be charged with the murder.

[6][7] On April 22, 2009, Superior Court of Justice of Brazil set Vitalmiro Moura free until a final decision about his request of Habeas corpus.

[18] On September 20, 2014, Neves Sales was arrested again facing accusations of having killed a young man and woman with whom he had a drug deal.

Stang and Junge were in Brasília to meet with Minister of Justice Marcio Thomaz Bastos after visiting the site of Dorothy's murder in Para state.

Angel of the Amazon[21] depicts her life's work, her devotion to her mission with Brazilian peasant farmers, and the events that sent her on a path of martyrdom.

[22] Sister Dorothy Stang, SNDdeN, is the first North American woman whose relics are included in the Shrine of Modern Martyrs at the Basilica of St. Bartholomew on Tiber Island in Rome.