Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Family’s pain on quake death of tragic Ulster nun
Charity praised for bringing Clare home
THE family of an Ulster nun killed in an earthquake in Ecuador have told how the charity which brought her body home helped ease their pain.
Sister Clare Crockett was one of almost 700 people killed when the
7.8 magnitude tremor hit the country’s Pacific coast in April last year.
The 33-year-old Derry woman was working as a missionary in a remote village when the building she was teaching in collapsed.
Her family feature in the final episode of RTE documentary series The Thin Green Line which goes behind the scenes to show the work of Irish embassies.
Clare’s sister Shauna revealed how she never imagined her sibling, who loved to play the guitar, would become a nun.
She said: “Which Clare do you want to know about, the nun or our sister?
“Clare was just an ordinary girl. She worked on a Saturday and went out like everyone else did. She enjoyed life.” The honorary consul worked with the family who were concerned about how to get Clare’s body home and put them in touch with the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust.
The charity was set up by Colin and Eithne Bell after their son Kevin was killed by a hit-and-run driver in New York in June 2013.
The people in their home city of Newry, Co Down, raised so much to bring Kevin home that they had £150,000 left over. When another Irishman died two weeks later in Thailand the Bells got in touch with his family and paid for his repatriation.
Since then the trust has brought home the remains of 360 Irish people who’ve died abroad.
Shauna said: “I rang Colin to tell him my sister was killed in an earthquake. Colin was in Australia and he worked from there phoning me and emailing me, ‘this is what is happening.’
“He is a fantastic man and does not get enough credit for what he does.”
The Thin Green Line is on RTE One on Thursday.