The march of the Landless Movement, (MST), to Brasilia has elicited solidarity throughout Brazil. One such group worth mentioning is the Brazilian Conference of the Religious, CRB: 50 nuns who, representing the Conference, walked more than 100 miles from Goiânia. It was impressive to see them, with their gray monastic habits in the middle of the crowd, some of them already elderly women, marching in line, happily participating in the struggle. This group of nuns is relevant for two reasons. In the first place it shows that the Church of the Liberation is alive, in spite of all the efforts to dismantle it or to render it invisible. Many hundreds of nuns now take part, with the poor; in the popular world, especially in the interior of the country and the periphery of the cities, becoming this way the true midwives of the base-Church. They understand that their vow of poverty implies more than not having, it demands a spiritual dimension of availability and openness to God. To be poor in our context of oppression means, out of love and solidarity with the poor, to make oneself poor, and together with the poor, to make a comitment against poverty and in favor of life and of justice for all. The presence of those nuns in the MST, whose members are mostly Christians, ensures that the struggle for the Earth is seen not only for its sociopolitical aspect, but that it is also understood that it is a struggle for the riches of the Kingdom, and that the Cause is anchored in the heart of God. This lends greatness to their commitment. In the second place, these nuns mark the counterpoint to the many criticisms disseminated through the means of communication, mostly coming from the intellectual strata of society. We can leave aside those who say that «MST is nothing more than a gang of impostors» and that its leaders are «a group of bandits». Those who think that way disqualify themselves and do not even deserve our attention. More subtle is the criticism of intellectuals who once were in favor of the transformation of society, but who now, facing general disillusionment, have taken a fatalistic and resigned posture towards history. There are some, for instance, who consider the MST to lack autonomy, «populations left behind by history» who present «outdated and long delayed demands», because their values usually come «from a conservative frame of reference: ownership of the land, communitarian work, religion, family, community...». Too bad for those who think that way, because such values, in the present ecological crisis, are precisely those which would make the future of the Earth possible. Affirmations such as those are not surprising. They are typical of the intellectual elite, functional to the Brazilian system of privileges, elite that according to the great historian Jose Honorio Rodrigues «never reconciled with the people, denied them their rights, destroyed their life and, when that elite saw the people growing, little by little withheld its approval, conspiring to relegate the people to the periphery, where the elite still thinks they belong.» («Conciliação e reforma,» p. 16.) This is why the deny that the MST has «an objective understanding of its place in history.» Here, ignorance goes hand in hand with arrogance. What do those intellectuals know of the civilizing work of the MST, that it gives consciousness of active citizenship to its thousands of members, that it has founded 1300 schools through which have passed 160,000 children and teenagers, that involves almost 3,000 educators and has already enabled 30,000 adults to become literate? MST has even founded in Gararema (São Paulo) the first Popular University of Brazil. MST challenges organized society to also march in the process of change, because the Brazil we have inherited does not dignify us. We deserve a better destiny, one which must be constructed. - Leonardo Boff, Theologian Free translation from the Spanish, sent by contacto@servicioskoinonia.org_