The psalmist expresses gratitude this Sunday that the Lord "did not let my enemies rejoice over me." A court in Brazil has sentenced a rancher to 30 years in prison for ordering the murder in 2005 of U.S.-born nun Dorothy Stang over a land dispute. Stang had lived for decades in the Amazon region advocating for the rural poor and opposing deforestation. The much-delayed process of convicting her killers became a test of Brazil's ability to tackle widespread impunity from such crimes in the region.

Vitalmiro Moura, 39, was given the maximum sentence Monday after a jury in the Amazon port city of Belem found him guilty of hiring a gunman to kill 73-year-old Stang. A member of the Sisters of Notre de Namur, Stang was born in Dayton, Ohio but was naturalized as a Brazilian citizen and devoted nearly 40 years of her life to helping landless peasants threatened by loggers and ranchers. Locals affectionately called her "the angel of the Amazon."

Moura had received the same sentence previously but it was overturned in 2008, a decision Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had called a "stain" on Brazil's image abroad. A retrial was ordered after it was determined that jurors had ignored evidence pointing to Moura's guilt in reaching their verdict.

Stang's murder became a symbol of the often-violent conflicts over natural resources in the vast Amazon region. The Land Pastoral Commission, which monitors conflicts over land in Brazil, says 365 people were murdered in such disputes between 1999 and 2008. Commission spokeswoman Cristiane Passos welcomed the judgment but said the government and justice system need to pay more attention to violent conflicts over land as the problem still claims many lives. "It's still far from the end of the violence," Passos said.

Source: An article by Peter Murphy for Reuters and dorothystang.org