Artist Sr. Margaret Hoffman shares these thoughts about creating this series of nine watercolor paintings:
One aspect of Sr. Dorothy Stang's story which is so compelling, is the non-violent way she met her death. According to an eyewitness, she saw her killers step out onto the road as she was carrying food and goods to Esperanza, a settlement which had been attacked by wealthy landowners. Realizing what they were about, she took her Bible from her bag—her "weapon"—and began to read the Beatitudes to them. The assassins hesitated, then shot her six times.
Sr. Joan Krimm, a close friend of Sr. Dorothy, who herself served many years in Brazil, paired the Beatitudes with excerpts from Dorothy’s letters. We can be grateful to her for this touching and prayerful expansion of the Beatitudes. It was from this source that I thought to make a Beatitudes series to celebrate Sr. Dorothy and her admirable and difficult way to create change nonviolently. As the farmers of Brazil said at her funeral: "We are not burying Dorothy, we are planting her!"
