One particularly striking case involves a couple in Derry who, after losing their newborn daughter, prayed for Sister Clare’s intercession and later conceived a healthy child. If youre interested check out the cause for her Beatification sisterclare.com/en/cause-of-be…
The postulator, Sister Kristen Gardner, continues to document extraordinary reports from over fifty countries Alleged physical healings, so miracles required for beatification, are also being catalogued, from sudden recoveries to life-threatening pregnancies carried safely to term.
The Vatican process is methodical. First comes the recognition of “heroic virtue,” granting the title Venerable. Beatification requires one scientifically unexplainable miracle, and canonization a second. While the investigation is confidential, reports continue to pour in.
Years of collected testimonies culminated in 2024 when the Servant Sisters petitioned the Vatican to open her cause for beatification. In January 2025 the tribunal in Spain declared her a Servant of God, starting the diocesan phase of investigation into her life, writings and reputation for holiness
Her grave in Derry City Cemetery became a place of pilgrimage, and people from across the globe began reporting spiritual favors and miraculous events attributed to her intercession. In 2018, the documentary All or Nothing introduced Clare’s story to the world.
On the 16th of April 2016, Ecuador was struck by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake. Clare was teaching music to girls in Playa Prieta when the building began to collapse. Witnesses recount her last heroic act, she ushered the children toward safety.The stairwell gave way and Sister Clare died aged just 33.
She carried her guitar everywhere, and between the music and her charismatic personality and the attractive young womans obvious joyful devotion she had a powerful aura about her. That light, tragically, was extinguished too soon.
To say her family and mates were shocked was an understatemet. Sister Clare embarked on a globe tropping missionary life, focussing on young people.
Starting in Spain, she then travelled to the United States, and finally Ecuador.
She later wrote “I had to do something for Him who had given His life for me.” By 2001, Clare had entered the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother, taking the religious name Sister Clare Maria of the Trinity and the Heart of Mary.
She said she wanted to be on stage and become a famous celebrity. In 2000, at age eighteen, she joined what she thought was a beach holiday in Spain which turned out to be a Holy Week retreat. She said that on Good Friday when she kissed a cross during mass something changed for her.
According to family and friends Clare was a "wild child," and a natural performer. By fifteen, she was hosting a youth programme on Channel 4 and had caught the eye of Nickelodeon. Clare Crockett described her life at the time as all parties, smoking cigarettes and late nights.
Did you know theres a millenial young lady from Derry who is on the route to sainthood? Clare Crockett was born in 1982, in the Brandywell district of Free Derry amid the Troubles which tore the lives of innocent people of both traditions apart.
The Dublin set ghost story featured female hitch-hikers. He came back to the capital a few more times, most notably starring with Sir Laurence Olivier in the Gaiety playing Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight in 1960.
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He'd return to the capital in triumph 20 years later, to star in his old mentor Hilton Edwards' short horror film Return to Glennascaul.
The teenager would tread the boards in the Gate, eventually broadening his acting talents into production and set design. By March of the following year, the future Citizen Kane director was performing in the Abbey Theatre before leaving Dublin for the world stage.
The precocious genius blagged his way into the Gate Theatre, impersonating a Broadway star. The Gate was then under the management of the equally fantastic and flamboyant Hilton Edwards.
16 year old Orson Welles embarked on an artistic adventure through Ireland following his Da's death in 1931. After a donkey riding painting excursion through the Aran Islands, he eventually found himself in Dublin, down to the last of his squandered inheritance.
In 2000 he published his autobiography, One Voice, and resumed touring at a pace to match his maturing age and livestyle.
A Terrible Beauty, released in late 2024, showed that the fire had not dimmed. In March 2025, at 79, he completed a sold-out 3 month tour of Ireland.
Detained and questioned under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, interrogated for two hours in a small room by big men. Cross-examined about his lyrics, his family, his associations. He later described it as threatening and frightening.
In the 1980s he suffered a heart attack. There were further heart operations. In 1998 he effectively stepped back from public performance on medical advice.Then there was the Holyhead incident in 2004.
But with genius comes darkness. Moore has spoken with disarming honesty about alcoholism and the depression it brought him. He once described drink as his “best friend” that became his “worst enemy.” And he admits that it nearly cost him everything.
In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from RTÉ Radio 1. His face appeared on a national postage stamp. Going from being banned to commemorated is a rite of passage for Irish genius.
Calling out the fatal negligence that took the lives of so many young people. A court order even banned it while legal proceedings were ongoing. In 2007 he was named Ireland’s Greatest Living Musician at the RTÉ People of the Year Awards.
“Viva la Quinta Brigada” honoured Irish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. “Lisdoonvarna” teased and celebrated rural matchmaking rituals. And “They Never Came Home,” written about the Stardust nightclub fire of 1981, went even further than politicians dared.
Classics like Ride On in 1984 and Ordinary Man in 1985 were songs about love and loneliness, injustice and emigration, and they really resonated with Irish men and women, old and young. His songs also tackled broad historical and cultural topics.
Planxty became one of the most important Irish bands of the 1970s, and Moores voice and prescense, bodhrán in hand, made him iconic. Then he changed direction again. In 1980 he formed Moving Hearts, mixing folk with rock and jazz. This was also the decade he went solo.
Most music critics also recognise it was being the "blueprint" for the legendary band Planxty, as it was the first time Moore, Donal Lunny, Andy Irvine, and Liam O'Flynn recorded together.
When Moore returned to Ireland, he recorded Prosperous in 1972, the album was groundbreaking.
It was there he encountered legendary figures like Luke Kelly and the uilleann piper Seamus Ennis. Moore later called those years “wild and wonderful.” The artist in him finally felt free. He never went back to the bank.
The 1966 bank strike, caused twelve long weeks of paralysis across the country and Moore went to England to find work. But he found something else instead. England in the late 1960s was alive with folk clubs thick with cigarette smoke, spilt stout and arguments.
