Editor’s Note: Mary FioRito and Betsy Fentress of EWTN Radio’s Conversations with Consequences spoke with Sister Kristen Gardner all about the life and cause for canonization of Sister Clare Crockett. Please find a transcript of the interview below, edited for length and clarity. 

Sister Kristen Gardner is the postulator for the beatification and canonization cause of Sister Clare Crockett. You have probably heard at some point of the hit show Derry Girls. Well, Sister Clare was a real-life Derry girl who became a Servant Sister of the Home of the Mother. Sister Clare died in 2016 at the age of 34 in an earthquake in Ecuador, where she was serving as a teacher, that left hundreds dead. Now, her cause for canonization is open and proceeding. 

Sister Clare Crockett was a very successful actress and TV presenter on, I believe, RTE and the BBC. Tell us about Sister Clare, how she came to meet you all, and how her cause is going so far. 

Sister Clare Crockett was a young girl from Northern Ireland. Her dream was to become a famous actress in Hollywood; and when she was 17, she already had been a presenter for several programs and Channel 4. She had been offered a job on Nickelodeon as well, and she was invited to go on a free trip to Spain, and she imagined parties and beaches. ... But then she discovered that it was really a pilgrimage and a retreat. So she tried to back out, but it was too late. She was up for anything ... an adventure, even if it was a religious adventure. So she signed up, and she arrived here in Spain. And I was also there. When she arrived, I was here with my family; I was 14 at the time. She was 17, so she was three years older than me ... but I do remember her at that retreat. We ended up at a monastery in Cuenca, Spain. She was always outside smoking, trying to get some sun. She didn’t take part much in the activities of the retreat. It was during Holy Week  2000. But on Good Friday, she was told, “You really should go into the church on Good Friday. We are remembering the day Our Lord died for us. You should really go in.” And so she entered, and in the moment when everyone venerates the cross, she got up and she got in the line like everyone else, and she kissed the cross, and, there, Our Lord gave her the grace to understand how much he loved her and how all of her sins and her lack of love for him were offending him, and how he was on the cross for her, to save her — and that changed her life. 

She had a very radical personality, so her immediate reaction was like, “Okay, he’s on the cross for love of me. I have to give my life to him. I have to give my life to him.” 

And so she saw the sisters at the retreat: “Well, I’ll have to be one of them.” It wasn't immediate.  It took her a year of going back and forth: “Is this really what God wants? Is this what I want?” And her parents were opposed to it, from what I understand. ... I mean, your daughter wants to be a famous actress; she loves partying — and all of a sudden, she comes back from a retreat in Spain and says she is going to be a nun. It was such a huge change that they couldn’t understand it. They didn’t have a strong faith as well. 

I think you really have to have faith to understand how God can give such a sudden grace to that person that changes the desires of their heart. ... Until they were able to come to Spain themselves, meet the sisters, and they were like, “Wow, this is real,” it took them time to process it. And, yes, it was difficult for her. She said, “I have to follow God, and I have to follow his will.” She was 18, and as soon as she finished high school, secondary school, as they say there in Ireland, she flew over to Spain to become a sister. 

The documentary is called All or Nothing. Were you involved in the making of that documentary?

Yes, I guess you could call me the producer the documentary. The idea was really from Father Rafael Alonso, our founder. He saw how many people became interested in Sister Clare after her death, because she died in 2016 in an earthquake in Ecuador; and after that, it was just an avalanche — an avalanche of emails, phone calls, letters, even asking for more information about Sister Clare, wanting to get to know her more. 

So we decided to do this documentary. We also discovered that we had lots of footage. And it is a blessing, because in the year 2000, there was a Catholic television station in Italy that closed down, and they offered us all the cameras and ... we have lots of tapes of just random footage, you know, around the house or doing things. Because people, when they see the documentary [they ask], “How do you have so much video of Sister Clare?” I was like, “Well, we don’t just have video of Sister Clare. We have video of all the sisters.” I had the same question. I thought, “How in the world did they kind of presciently know that they were going to want to do a movie about this extraordinary woman?” No, we didn’t — we have lots of footage of lots of different things. I mean, hundreds of tapes. 

So that summer after the earthquake, I went through it all and saw how much material we had. You know, sometimes in one tape, I found 10 seconds of Sister Clare, and the other hour was somebody else, other things, but … it was a lot of material. So we saw this as a sign from God. 

And we started; we did it all ourselves. You know, I asked the sisters in the U.S., “Can you record interviews there in Jacksonville with all the teachers and students who knew Sister Clare?” And Ecuador; the same thing with all the sisters in the different communities, who did their part to contribute to the documentary, and then they sent it all to me, and I put it together, basically. 

 

She had hit the pinnacle of what a lot of young girls dream for. She had an actual television offer, loads of money coming along with that. I remember at some point in the documentary, she talks about being in a very high-end hotel, and ... she came back to her room and cried because she felt so empty. None of it filled her up. But she was also a very beautiful, very striking young woman. And I think that is just so odd to Americans these days, because we have fewer women entering religious life, and certainly very few TV stars entering religious life, except for maybe Mother Dolores Hart. But the children, who I guess are young adults now, that she taught in Florida, they seem to just have been besotted with her, like she was their favorite teacher. Can you tell us a little bit about their experience? How did that continue to shape her vocation? 

I think she she had such a gift for acting — and the gift she had for people. She was a very good people person. She immediately connected with all different types of people. Everybody loved her. The gifts that God had given her — instead of putting them at her own service to become famous, she put them at the service of God. So when she was teaching little kids, preschoolers ... she had such a gift to catch their attention. She would tell them a story, and they loved it. So she put those gifts at the service of God, to bring the kids to God. 

And I think it is also amazing how you ask these kids now — well, one of them just got married recently and has her baby girl that she named Clare, after Sister Clare — but you ask them, and they still remember concrete things that Sister Clare would tell them. One remembers how she explained the scapular to them. Another remembers how she explained the difference between venial and mortal sin and the importance of going to confession. I mean, they remember very concrete things. 

 

Can you tell us about any intercessory prayers that they are attributing to Sister Clare? I think there's one on infertility. We'd love to hear about those. 

There are many cases of people who aren’t able to have babies, and they ask for Sister Clare’s intercession: stories of babies named Clare, after Sister Clare. 

I can’t remember the name, but some type of eye disease that was degenerative, and the person had already lost a great deal of eyesight and asked Sister’s intercession: They’ve totally recovered the eyesight.

There’s also a 3-year-old child a few weeks ago in Barcelona: He fell from a height of 3 meters, and he broke his head open. The skull was fractured, blood coming out of the ears. They took him to the hospital, and the parents began to pray. And three days later, the little boy was running around as if nothing had ever happened. The fracture had disappeared. So we are still waiting for the medical reports and all the evaluations. 

 

Sister Kristen, let’s go back to the day that Sister Clare and the five girls were killed in the Ecuadorian earthquake. Can you take us back to that moment? What happened after her remains were found? 

So the week before the earthquake, there was a flood ... and so the school was flooded. The water was about waist high. And I think that this flood also caused the foundations of the building to be weakened a bit, because it was wet for whole week. It was Saturday morning. In the afternoon, they went to Mass. It was one of the first days they had been able to go to Mass after the flood because they were not able to leave the building, and there was no priest living close by. At 5 p.m., they came home, and Sister Clare went with a group of girls to practice the guitar. She was teaching them how to play the guitar. And at 7, they were going to pray the Rosary together. 

The earthquake occurred at 6:58, so it was two minutes right before they were going to start praying the Rosary. At first, they thought it was just something small, but then it kept going and kept going. So that is why they started to run towards the stairs, which really, when an earthquake occurs, the stairs are the worst place you can go. So all the ones who died were on the staircase; the sisters who were further up and who did not make it to the staircase are the ones who survived. One of the sisters went running to the tabernacle to save Jesus. 

Once the building collapsed, it took them around a day until they were able to find their bodies. So that was very painful, obviously. But I think, for me, at least that whole day of prayer and waiting for the response, to know if she  was alive, the others were alive ... that was the day I remember feeling that Our Lord said to me, “You can’t be sad. You believe in eternal life.” And I was like, “Yes, I do — but she’s my sister.”

Joy really emanates from the screen while watching the documentary. I just found myself looking in front of the screen, smiling most of the time, until I cried when she died. I found the interviews with the family so genuine and interesting. Her two sisters say that they are now Massgoers. And is there any kind of movement in Ireland in vocations because of her life and her example?

I don’t have specific numbers of how many vocations in Ireland. I do think that she has a special mission with Ireland: We have a community of sisters now about 45 minutes away from her grave in Derry, because her family asked for her to be buried in Derry, and we accepted that petition because it really seemed she had a special mission to evangelize Ireland after her death. The sisters who live close, whenever they go to the tomb, there is always someone at the tomb, always, sometimes several people. She brings a lot of hope, especially to the young people in Derry.

Over 100 people from Derry came for the opening of the cause. Here in Spain, the streets were full of Irish people all over the place. They are planning a pilgrimage for next year. And I think it is beautiful, the mission she has in Ireland.

Betsy Fentress of The Catholic Association also participated in this interview.