The Killing of Sister McCormack

by Anne Henderson

Published by Harper Collins, here pp. 234-237.

This is not the full account of the killing of Sister Irene McCormack, but a small part of the book that demonstrates her growing exasperation that she is unable to preside at the Eucharist. It demonstrates from her experience of running a parish, that a woman can do everything a male priest could do.

Irene often put her more immediate instincts first and she was inclined to scoff at the decision of the two priests to leave Huasahuasi. Male cowardice, she was heard to mutter. But there was good reason for the escape which she never fully realised. In an earlier missionary posting, one of the priests and a younger colleague had been given two days to get out by armed terrorists. It had taken a day for the priest to say his farewells. Later, returning to the presbytery, he had not been able to find his colleague. Then he discovered a newly dug grave in the yard of the residence. The younger priest had been killed and hastily buried by guerrilla fighters.

Irene herself had just missed death on another occasion. Soon after she had returned to Huasahuasi, there had been a request for the sisters to go up to a hamlet for the feast of St Sebastian in January. This was a significant fiesta for the settlement and the presence of a religious was important to the people. At the time, the only catechist available to conduct the ceremony was a local woman because most of the male catechists had gone to Tarma for a seminar that week. And while a woman catechist was good enough for Sundays she would not do for a grand occasion like a fiesta, unless that woman was a nun.

Irene and Edith insisted that the local woman would just have to do it. The danger was too great. But the locals were persistent. Someone would come down from the hamlet to see them every day with the same request. Towards the end of the week, Irene softened. Maybe she should go. Edith, knowing what was going through her mind, suggested she seek Raul’s advice. He seemed to have invaluable local knowledge, though it was probably better not to ask how he got it.

‘We asked him and he said on no account to go,’ Edith recalls. ‘He said it about six times. But even then, when we got home, Irene still thought she should go. That evening someone came from the hamlet to ask again. The next day was the start of the fiesta and they wanted the liturgy. I said that I thought Raul knew something we didn’t. They came the next day saying that if she wouldn’t come on the first day, would she come on the third day of the fiesta. And I was behind her saying no, no, no, because she almost said yes. The next day there was a massacre in the hamlet. The army came in and shot eight people.’

Over time, in Irene, there was an ongoing impatience, mostly held in check, at how women, and nuns in particular, were too often no more than a fetch and carry support network for parish priests. Irene’s months at sharing the running of the parish demonstrated that the sisters could gather the people as well as any priest. But nuns are not allowed to consecrate the communion wafers. So, before each Eucharist, Irene or Dorothy had to navigate the dangerous road into Tarma to fetch consecrated hosts. The women were allowed to take the Eucharist to the hamlets, distribute it at ceremonies in St John the Baptist church, but they weren’t permitted to consecrate the bread that made the ceremony authentic. And they couldn’t celebrate Masses at which the Eucharist played a central part.

Like many nuns, Irene was versed in theology and had an informed understanding of liturgy. So what made them unsuitable as celebrants? Anyone can baptise a child if there is no priest; technically, couples marry each other, the priest only a witness. Not surprisingly Irene pondered all this and more and on 17 July 1990, in her quarterly circular letter, she came out with her feelings quite bluntly:

"Have given up trying to use the terms ‘paraliturgy’ or ‘liturgy of the word’ or any other ‘excuses’ the official church uses to deny collaborative ministry its rightful place to women and married lay people. I used to try to do the ‘right’ thing and correct the people when they came asking us to celebrate their ‘misas’. I’ve become convinced that they are closer to the truth and were ‘freeing’ me to exercise eucharistic ministry amongst them . . . It seems to me, therefore, that the preoccupation of our Church leaders with power and control over who can celebrate the Eucharist, is right up the creek. It’s a contradiction to be talking about a ‘sacred meal’ and have to sit and watch, not participate. Quite apart from the lack of atmosphere of a fellowship meal, or lack of basic symbolism when only one person drinks from the cup and we use a tasteless wafer in place of bread . . . As we in our little Christian communities, high up in the Andes, gather in the memory of Jesus, there is no power or authority on earth that can convince me that Jesus is not personally present. I feel grateful that these months on end without the ‘official Mass’ and in a culture where I’m experiencing new symbols, has gifted me with a new appreciation of the Eucharist.”

In the later months of 1990, Father Leo Donnelly came to Huasahuasi to take over as parish priest so Dorothy and Irene moved back to their committee work at the parish and their work with the women and children. A reverend father was among them all again to take control. Raul would feel more comfortable now a man was in charge. He hadn’t always responded to Irene’s requests for a car when needed; little things like this suggested he was testing her authority. Money had been left to pay him well for the work he did at the church, but Irene objected to paying the salary if he didn’t turn up when called. No doubt some of the suggestions that Leo found her bossy derived from this. And yet Raul is respectful of Irene’s memory when I speak with him in Huasahuasi. Perhaps it was Irene’s energy and determination in that slowly paced culture which put him offside. ‘Irene was always smiling,’ he tells me. ‘She would never say no, not because she was a superwoman but because she could always find alternatives, always find an answer. And her preparation for religious ceremonies was very dedicated.’

Read three of Irene McCormack’s letters here.