The official start of Sister Clare Crockett’s candidacy for sainthood was marked by a ceremony held on 12 January in the Catedral Magistral de los Santos Niños Justo y Pastor near Madrid, Spain.
It follows the Londonderry nun being declared a Servant of God by the Catholic Church, which is the <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/sister-clare-crockett-the-beloved-all-or-nothing-irish-nun-up-for-sainthood/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">first step towards becoming a saint</mark></a>, in November 2024.
"Never in a million years did we think she was going to be a nun, never mind make her way to sainthood," Shauna Gill, the younger sister of Sr Clare, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4mzdxjlj1o"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">told the <em>BBC</em></mark></a> before the ceremony, adding that though the service would be emotional, the family would be "beaming with pride".
"A lot of people have asked us about grieving for Clare, but I don't think we have ever grieved for Clare because she is talked about every day," Gill said.
More than 100 people – including Sr Clare's friends, family and Derry Bishop Donal McKeown – travelled to the Spanish capital for the event, the <em>BBC</em> reports. It highlights that the path to sainthood in the Catholic Church typically involves five key stages:
1) A waiting period
The process to make someone a saint cannot normally start until at least five years after an individual's death, though this waiting period can be waived by the Pope.
2) Become a Servant of God
An investigation is opened to see whether the person lived their life with sufficient holiness; evidence is gathered, and if the case is accepted the individual is officially declared a Servant of God.
3) Proof of "heroic virtue" to become venerable
The department that investigates and makes recommendations regarding sainthood to the Pope further scrutinises the evidence, and if the case is approved, it is passed to the Pope who decides whether the person lived a life of "heroic virtue". If so, they are then declared "venerable".
4) Verification of a miracle to become blessed
The next stage, beatification, requires a miracle to be attributed to prayers made to the individual under consideration for sainthood after his or her death. A potentially miraculous incident needs to be verified by evidence, considered by the Vatican's investigating department, before it is accepted. After beatification, the candidate is given the title "blessed".
5) Canonisation
This is the final step in declaring a deceased person a saint. To reach this stage, a second miracle normally needs to be attributed to prayers made to the candidate after they have been beatified.
While the above process is extremely rigorous, as highlighted in Stage 3, there is a degree of flexibility based on the authority of a pope.
For example, the French Revolution’s Martyrs of Compiègne were <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/french-revolutions-singing-martyrs-of-compiegne-canonised-despite-lack-of-miracle/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">recently canonised by Pope Francis despite a lack of miracle being attributed to them</mark></a>.
Sister Clare died in 2016 aged 33 years old during a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that claimed the lives of nearly 700 people in Ecuador. She was ushering children down a stairway at the school where she taught music, when the stairs collapsed, resulting in her death.
In 2018, her order, the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother, chose to commemorate Sister Clare’s life and achievements in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0LKZm2BqZo&t=0s"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">documentary film</mark></a> titled <em>All or Nothing</em><a href="https://aleteia.org/2018/05/01/the-remarkable-story-of-a-33-year-old-irish-nun-killed-in-an-earthquake" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">,</a> which gained international renown due to its inspiring impact on viewers.
"Love is an easy word for Christians to throw around, but the real thing changes lives," <a href="https://x.com/ddhitchens/status/1880288177203868048"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">says</mark></a> Dan Hitchens, a former editor of the <em>Catholic Herald</em>, writing in the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>. "People who knew Sr Clare were hauled out of depression, started believing in God, or discovered a vocation. They found something worth living for."
Following the ceremony at the cathedral in Alcalá de Henaresin, the subsequent investigation into Sr Clare's candidacy for sainthood will initially be lead by one of Sr Clare's fellow nuns, Sister Kristen Gardner.
<em>Photo: Sister Clare Crockett at the Santuario de la Virgen de la Hoz, Spain, 8 September 2006. (Photo from <a href="https://www.sisterclare.com/en/multimedia"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">homeofthemother.org</mark></a>).</em>
