The beatification cause of Sister Clare Crockett, an inspirational young Irish religious sister who died in 2016, formally opened Sunday with a ceremony at the Cathedral of Alcalá de Henares in Madrid, Spain.
The ceremony marked the beginning of the diocesan phase of the process, in which an elected tribunal will investigate her life, virtues, and reputation for holiness.
Crockett, who died in a 2016 earthquake in Ecuador at the age of 33, is now titled “servant of God,” the first step in the Catholic Church’s path to sainthood.
More than 100 people traveled from her hometown of Derry, Northern Ireland, to attend the event, including Bishop Donal McKeown. South American Cardinal Fernando Chomalí Garib, the archbishop of Santiago de Chile, also attended.
In Derry, approximately 500 people gathered at a movie theater to watch the ceremony broadcast live.
“The people of Derry are so proud of her,” McKeown told The Irish News. Crockett’s story “is a very striking example of someone who had a conversion experience and dedicated their life to Jesus.”
Crockett was born on Nov. 14, 1982, in Derry. As a charismatic and fun-loving teenager, she had a gift for acting and was contracted to present a television show on Channel 4 in the U.K., attracting interest from Nickelodeon. Already in her early teens she was frequently partying, drinking, and smoking.
But her life changed when she attended a Holy Week retreat in Spain at the age of 17 with the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother, a community founded in 1982 with a focus on the Eucharist, Marian spirituality, and outreach to youth.
She recalled later in her personal testimony that when she arrived in Spain she was “very superficial and a wild child.” But that began to change when she took part in the Good Friday adoration of the cross, kissing the feet of Jesus.
“I do not know how to explain exactly what happened. I did not see the choirs of angels or a white dove come down from the ceiling and descend on me, but I had the certainty that the Lord was on the cross, for me,” she remembered.
“And along with that conviction, I felt a great sorrow … and prayed the Stations of the Cross. When I returned to my pew, I already had imprinted in me something that was not there before. I had to do something for him who had given his life for me.”
It was the start of a long journey of conversion and healing that led to her joining the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother.
Despite initial struggles to leave behind a life of “superficiality and sin,” she entered religious life in 2001 in Spain, making her first vows in 2006 and her final vows in 2010.
Known for her infectious joy and dedication to others, she served in Spain, the United States, and Ecuador.
Sister Clare died on April 16, 2016, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the school in Playa Prieta, Ecuador, where she was teaching music. Five postulants also lost their lives in the collapse.
A documentary about her life, “All or Nothing: Sister Clare Crockett,” has amassed over 4 million views on YouTube in Spanish and English, and her story continues to inspire vocations and deepen faith worldwide.
In the years since her death, stories of graces and miracles attributed to Crockett have poured in from around the world, according to Sister Kristen Gardner, the postulator of her cause.
“Desperate souls on the verge of suicide have regained hope, university students lost in vice have found strength to return to the Lord,” Gardner said during the ceremony on Jan. 12.
“There is a very characteristic common note in the messages received,” she said, “and that is that many describe Sister Clare as their friend, even without having met her, she is their friend.”
Her family, present at the ceremony, expressed pride and gratitude for the recognition of Sister Clare’s life.
“Never in a million years did we think she was going to be a nun, never mind make her way to sainthood,” Shauna Gill, Crockett’s sister, told BBC News in Northern Ireland.
More than 13,000 people had watched the livestream of the ceremony on YouTube within 24 hours of the event.
The opening of the beatification process is the first step in what could be a long journey toward sainthood. Bishop Antonio Prieto Lucena of Alcalá de Henares, who presided over Sunday’s ceremony, noted that the process will examine Crockett’s heroic virtues and any graces or favors attributed to her intercession.
According to Gardner, the sisters have received “messages and mail from more than 50 countries” with testimonies of how Crockett’s story has inspired, including from young people who have decided to embrace religious life after learning more about her life.
“Countless seminarians and religious have said that Sister Clare has saved their vocation, just when they were thinking that they had no other option but to turn their backs on God,” Gardner said.
The postulator added that Crockett’s overflowing joy and coherence of life has led many souls “to discover that true happiness is found only in God.”
The opening of her cause “is not motivated by human reasons but by the desire to give glory to God, which is manifested in the testimony of dedication to Christ that shines in the lives of his servants,” she said.
This article was originally published on Catholic News Agency.
