“If you don’t know about Sister Clare Crockett, an Irish party girl turned nun, you definitely should (she might just be a saint 😉)
She was born and raised in Derry, during a period of violence and political instability. Her family weren’t particularly devout, and Clare revelled in being the class clown. She dreamed one day of being an actress.
By the time she was 16, she began to feel an emptiness: as though her dream of being a famous television personality wasn’t going to make her happy. Around that time, a friend invited her to go on a trip to Spain for young people.
Clare jumped at the chance of a week of sun, sea, sand and booze. But she later realised that it wasn’t going to be a jolly.
It was a Holy Week pilgrimage. And she was going to be staying in a monastery.
Her name was on the plane ticket, and so she had to go. When she was there, she received instruction in the faith. When she was asked about the meaning of the Eucharist, she took a drag of her cigarette and asked: “What’s the Eucharist?”
On Good Friday, Clare lined up in the aisle along with everyone else, for the Adoration of the Cross. As she knelt down to kiss the feet of Christ, something happened. In her own words: “I had the certainty that the Lord was on the Cross, for me.”
After the service, a sister found her crying, and saying: “He died for me. He loves me! Why hasn’t anyone ever told me this before?”
The priest then asked Clare if she would like to go to the 2000 World Youth Day in Rome. Clare said yes, despite not knowing what WYD was or who John Paul II was. By her own admission, she was more interested in shopping than going shopping in Italy than visiting churches.
But during that pilgrimage, she once again felt the voice of God speaking to her. And this time it frightened her. He told her: “I want you to live like them.” “They” were the sisters, and to live “like them” meant being a nun. She turned up her music to drown out the thought.
When she got home, she returned to her old ways. But she felt a real sense of emptiness: the parties and the booze were not making her happy. One night, at a party, she heard the voice of God again: “Why do you continue to hurt me?”
But it wasn’t until she went to England to shoot a film that she truly felt what she described as the great “cavity” of her soul. It was then that she realised that her happiness and freedom could only be found in God. At the age of 18, she resolved to be a nun.
She told her parents that she was going to be a nun, with a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her friends and family naturally thought she was crazy: this gregarious, funny, irreverent girl who’d never darkened the door of a church was going to be a nun.
It wasn’t always easy. She said that at the beginning: “I was tempted to look back and say, ‘I want it back.’ But I understood that I had found an even greater love.”
She lived and worked among young people in Spain, the US and in Ecuador. She made her perpetual vows in 2010 and used the example of a blank cheque to describe her vocation. Each day she would give a blank check to the Lord, so that He could ask of her whatever he wanted.
In 2012, she was sent to Ecuador, first to Guayaquil and then to Playa Prieta. She taught in schools and gave faith formation classes. She and her sisters also brought food parcels and medicines to the local populations.
Those who knew Sister Clare all use the same word to describe her: joy. Giving up the partying, the boyfriends, the dreams of being rich and famous didn’t make her less joyful: it liberated her to know an even deeper joy.
In 2016, a powerful earthquake struck Playa Prieta. Sister Clare was killed along with five others when a building collapsed. She was just 33.
Not long earlier, Sister Clare was asked if she was afraid of dying. She replied: “Why should I be afraid of death, if I’m going to go with the One I have longed to be with my whole life?”
I hope that one day, Sister Clare can be canonised by the Church. She was a courageous, vivacious young woman who shows us that God can call us at any point in our lives.”
- catherine de medtweetci
Movie about Sr. Clare here: All or Nothing
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