Former actress Sister Clare Crockett is in the running to become a saint nearly nine years after her death.
The late Northern Ireland native was recognized as a candidate for sainthood during a ceremony held in Madrid, Spain, on Sunday, January 11, per the BBC. The ceremony, which was streamed by Crockett’s family and friends in her hometown of Londonderry, comes two months after Crockett was officially declared a Servant of God by the Catholic Church — one of the first steps in the sainthood process.
“Never in a million years did we think she was going to be a nun, never mind make her way to sainthood,” Crockett’s sister, Shauna Gill, told the BBC ahead of the ceremony. “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.”
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Gill went on to joke: “Our Clare would have loved all of this attention and the drama about her. But Sr Clare would have liked to be in the background – I don’t think she would like all the limelight.”
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Crockett died at age 33 during a 2016 earthquake in Ecuador, where she had been teaching music. Prior to becoming a nun, she acted in the 2002 TV movie Sunday, per IMDb, and turned down a presenting role on Nickelodeon.
In a testimony shared via her Sister Clare and Companions website, Crockett described herself as “a bit (or a lot) of a wild child” growing up. “I got my first job on Channel 4 in England when I was fifteen years old, then had a few small jobs as a television host, and when I was eighteen I had a small role in a film,” she wrote. “I loved theater, just as much acting as writing, reading and directing. My goal was Hollywood … seriously. Why couldn’t it be? Furthermore, my mom’s palm reader said that I would be (ahem, ahem).”
It was at the age of 16 that she “began to experience an emptiness inside me” after doing some television work. “’This whole thing of being a host isn’t for me,’ I thought, and I declined a job offer for a well-known channel, Nickelodeon,” she explained.
She officially became a nun at age 18 in 2001. “She took her first vows on February 18, 2006, taking the religious name of Sr. Clare Maria of the Trinity and the Heart of Mary. She took her perpetual vows on September 8, 2010,” her website bio reads.
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On Sunday, Gill told the BBC that she and Crockett’s loved ones “are immensely proud of her, nervous to the unknown as nobody has ever experienced this in our lifetime,” adding, “The support we have is unbelievable.”
According to the outlet, being declared a Servant of God is one of the first steps toward becoming a saint — a lengthy process that can go on for multiple years after the person’s death. Additional steps before canonization include showing proof of “heroic virtue” and the verification of a miracle caused by prayers made to the individual.
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