Calls are growing for the canonisation of a Derry-born nun with people attributing favours to her intercession, writes Ruadhan Jones
April 16 marks the fourth anniversary of the death of Derry woman Sr Clare Crockett in 2016. She died a relative unknown in an earthquake in Ecuador where she was ministering. She was there with her religious congregation the Servants of the Home of the Mother (SHM), working in the local community. But though she might have been obscure, in her death, it seems, she will achieve a dream which she had abandoned in life – to be a famous nun.
Sr Clare’s journey from a lukewarm, cultural-Catholic to a devout sister was remarkable for its speed and the totality of the change. She was, as the title of a documentary on her life suggests, an ‘all or nothing’ type.
Before she took her vows, Clare Crockett was an outgoing, jovial 17-year-old from the Maiden City. Her dream was to become a famous actress and with her abundant natural talents, that seemed a distinct possibility.
She also loved the high life, taking every opportunity to party, to drink, to smoke and to have fun. Fr Roland Colhoun, who knew Clare well through the youth programme Christ in Others Retreats (COR), told The Irish Catholic “by her own admission, she wasn’t very religious”. “What attracted her to COR was the fun and the games. She had that comical nature that drew her to comical things, and to entertain – she was an unconscious entertainer.”
It was a quirk of fate that led her back to embracing active participation in the life of the Church. A friend dropped out of a trip to Spain and Clare was invited to take her place. Expecting a holiday of sun, fun, booze and boys, she thought they were going to somewhere like Ibiza.
In fact, the trip was a pilgrimage for Holy Week with the SHM, a young Spanish congregation. And instead of partying, she was to experience a spiritual awakening. On Good Friday, as she kissed the feet of the crucified Christ, she suddenly understood why she was there.
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The documentary on her life, All or Nothing, records her description of that moment: “I remember looking at him and, in that moment, I just felt the mercy of God and I saw that it was my sins that nailed Our Lord to the Cross. And I just started crying.”
That moment set her on her path to God. Immediately after, she went with one of the sisters to Fr Rafael Alonso, founder of the SHM. She wanted to become a nun, she told him. For that to happen, he responded, you have to come back here again. And she agreed.
But her old ambition to be famous remained, and so she decided to be a famous nun. She became so convinced of this fact that, on a return trip to Spain in 2001, she even told Fr Rafael Alonso. He describes the humorous encounter in the documentary. “She came to me, smoking and said, ‘I’m going to become a nun, and I’m going to be a famous nun’. I said to her, ‘yes, I think you will become a famous nun, but to become a famous nun you will have to be the most humble. And to be the most humble, you will have to learn to obey’. Then, she took a puff of her cigarette and said, ‘Well then, I’ll obey’.”
But some of the sisters doubted her ability, and initially she didn’t have the strength to change her ways. Sr Clare explained later: “During the pilgrimage, I said ‘I’m changing’ – then I went home, and I didn’t change. I continued with my friends, with my boyfriend. I continued in the same way. I didn’t have the strength to break with all these things, because I didn’t ask the Lord to help me.”
Clare finally opened herself up to the Lord’s help, and despite the pleas of her family and her manager, she joined the Home of the Mother in 2001 as a candidate for the sisterhood. However, though she had changed greatly in the two years preceding, this only completed the first leg of the journey.
Her fellow sisters were impressed with her enthusiasm, her spirit, and her joy, though as Sr Karen McMahon remembers, she found it difficult to adjust. “It wasn’t that she entered and straight away was very holy,” Sr Karen said, “she came here with all her worldly vices. For example, she wasn’t very big into physical work.”
She initiated adoration with the children, leading them in song, prayer and quiet reflection before the Blessed Sacrament”
However, she showed a great willingness to submit and to learn. She did things she wasn’t comfortable with, and if she did them wrong, she would make a joke of it, then change her ways. Her strong will and determination to overcome any challenge drove her forward, while her submission to God’s will gave her direction.
The general superior, Mother Ana Maria Campo, said in All or Nothing that she was a docile soul and observed the changes the Lord worked in her. “The Lord took away everything from her that wasn’t proper to a religious,” she said. “Then all the virtues began to grow, all of the gifts that she had.
“At the beginning, she loved to draw attention to herself. But gradually, that all started to disappear and, on the contrary, she always wanted to go unnoticed.”
But despite this desire to go unnoticed, her beauty, her outgoing nature and her strong will made her naturally eye-catching. She was always acting and joking, bringing “joy to our conversations,” Rafael Alonso remembers fondly.
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After taking her first vows in early 2006, she spent her time teaching young children, and her zeal for souls, especially of the youth, was incredible. It was with children that she found the outlet for her talents, instilling in them great love and devotion for the Eucharist and for Our Lady.
In October 2006, she was sent to live at a new SHM community in Jacksonville, Florida. She and four other sisters started ministering to the nearby Assumption Catholic school. It was here she demonstrated her ability to reach the souls of children and young people.
She would make up new songs and games for them, often coming home with her habit stained by the dirty hands of the children. The children were struck by her great happiness and joy, the excitement she exuded for the Lord.
They were drawn to her, and through her to the Lord. She initiated adoration with the children, leading them in song, prayer and quiet reflection before the Blessed Sacrament. As well as this, she organised a rosary club, leading sprints to a statue of Our Lady to recite the Marian prayer.
Summer camps
In the summers, she and the sisters organised apostolate summer camps for young girls. As with the other students, the girls fell in love with her. Sr Karen noticed that “the girls always gathered round her any chance they had. Not because she was looking to be the centre, but because I think she was a light for them.”
As part of the apostolate camps, the sisters would bring the girls on trips around America. Then one year, it was decided that they would go to Ireland. Fr Roland remembers Sr Clare visiting Derry with a group of American girls in 2009. He was amazed by the change he saw in her.
“When Sr Clare arrived with the girls, I noticed the respect the children had for her. These weren’t little children; they were teenage girls. But you could see that they had the utmost respect for her, as a religious sister and as a person.
“To get a group of girls so thoroughly into their faith at that age indicated that Sr Clare had a great holiness about her. She communicated this with joy and exuberance.”
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The following year, on September 8, 2010, Sr Clare took her perpetual vows, consecrating herself totally to God. Like her encounter with Christ on Good Friday in 2000, she cried after her consecration. Except this time they were tears of joy: “I cried because I was so happy. I’m finally getting to do it,” she told her mother.
After taking her vows, she was sent to a new SHM house in Valencia, Spain. Again, she impressed the sisters, this time with her obedience and willingness. She told them that “every morning, I always sign a blank cheque for the Lord, and on that blank cheque he can write whatever he wants and break my plans”.
Over the next two years, she went wherever she was called and did whatever she was called to do. At first, she moved around Spain, impressing all she met with her selflessness and tirelessness. She applied herself wholeheartedly in all things.
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Finally, in 2012, she was called by her order to move to Guayaquil, Ecuador. Arriving in Ecuador, she recorded a testimony which shows how much she had changed and seems now to foreshadow her final end: “When I entered as a sister in the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother, I did so to dedicate my life to God and I knew I had to be open to whatever the Lord asked of me. So, when I was told I was going to Ecuador, then I put my life in God’s hands and totally accepted it.”
She spent the first year in Ecuador working in schools in a poor town, teaching, leading groups and organising retreats. Her sisters and brothers were filled with joy at her presence. Despite the heat, despite minding 40 young children, she never tired and would regularly join the children’s games at lunch.
While she was always ready to encourage and to be there for her sisters and the children, if she could remain hidden, she would”
At retreats, Sr Kelly Pezo remembers that Sr Clare would sing “with all her heart, all her strength until her voice was gone. And for me, that was how she lived. She lived giving of herself until there was nothing left. When she sang, she kept nothing back, and when she lived, she kept nothing back.”
But while she was always ready to encourage and to be there for her sisters and the children, if she could remain hidden, she would. She began more and more to seek out silence and time to be alone with God.
In 2014, she moved from Guayaquil to Playa Prieta, the final leg of her journey on Earth. On April 16, 2016, Sr Clare and five girls were killed when their house collapsed during an earthquake. That very day, Sr Clare had told a sister a lunch: “Well, I’m not afraid to die. Why should I be afraid of death, if death is the encounter with Christ who is the One I have always desired to be with?”
Approach
In keeping with her approach to life, all or nothing, she gave her life to God and he accepted her offering. On her way to the wreckage, one of her sisters had a premonition, in which Sr Clare spoke to her and said, “I’m fine, don’t worry about me, I’m just fine”. Sr Clare knew that she was on her way to the one she always desired.
Sr Clare’s development as a nun had primarily been learning to obey and to be humble. Those who knew her say she flourished once she gave up the desire to be the centre of attention. But the testimonies of her sisters, of her friends and family, and of the children she worked with demonstrate how she couldn’t help but draw people to her.
Though she died having abandoned her desire to be famous, news of her death began to spread through the world media. To the great surprise of the SHM, the likes of the BBC reported on it, and in Ireland her death received wide coverage, particularly in the North.
Sr Clare was buried in her hometown of Derry on May 2, 2016.
The effect she had on those close to her was quickly evident. Her family and friends, though none of them were regular Church goers, began to attend Mass again. They would visit her grave regularly and ask her for advice and intercession. In Playa Prieta, the locals noticed her continued influence in the graces they received, and likewise in Jacksonville, in Valencia, in any place that she stayed.
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After her death, the SHM began to receive news from people who, since learning about Sr Clare, had become her friends and sought her out as a protector of their lives and families. Fr Roland also noticed the growing devotion, regularly receiving calls from people looking for her grave, now a site of pilgrimage.
“Since 2016, a devotion has grown up to her. Many people visit her grave, I get regular requests for directions to it. People are praying to her, asking for favours, for her intercession. I pray to her too, I have great belief in her holiness and she’s a very powerful intercessor.”
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Recently, a prayer group has also been established by her sisters, Shauna Gill and Megan Nicell. They believe that a number of miracles have been effected through Sr Clare’s intercession.
Speaking to The Irish News, Mrs Gill said a young boy in the US who was on life-support recovered after a priest asked the Derry nun to intercede. The nun’s intercession is also credited for the birth of twins to a couple who had been thought infertile.
Mrs Gill said Sr Clare would “love” the idea of calls for her to be made a saint: “She went from only ever wanting to be famous and life a life of luxury to giving everything up. But she made the right choice,” she said.
Fr Colhoun believes that it is important that people pray to her, and also hopes that she might be canonised one day.
“I would love to see people pray for her cause and her intercession. I would love to see her canonised, but that’s a bit off yet. I have a strong feeling that we as Irish people promote our own last. I would love to see local causes, like Sr Clare, promoted so that we can encourage this generation of Irish Catholics to really embrace the faith.”
It is a strength of our Catholic faith that the death of a young woman, killed in an earthquake at the age of 33, can become a sign of joy and hope. Whereas the death of the young is so often heart breaking and destructive, Sr Clare’s death has brought an abundance of life and continues to do so.