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Sr Irene McCormack – her spirit is coming to be associated with life affirming
works
Ten years after she was murdered in a mountain village in Peru, Sr Irene McCormack’s faith inspires others who carry on in her name. Dan
McAloon writes
On May 21, 1991, Marxist guerrillas in the mountain village of Huasahuasi, Peru, executed Irene McCormack, Josephite Sister and Australian missionary. Sr Irene had been
found guilty of the crime of feeding the village poor.
The risks of living in Huasahuasi, an impoverished village of 5,000 Pueblos people in a valley high in the Peruvian Andes, had been made known to Irene
and her companions. The violent activities of armed terrorist groups operating in the Peruvian mountains were a daily reality. But, despite warnings, Irene chose to stay with the village and its people.
After 30 years of teaching in Australian schools and having made her decision to work as a missionary with the Peruvian people, Sr Irene had found her purpose in life in the simple village schoolroom and library
where she taught the village children how to read and write.
Her letters to her family and Congregation told how she felt she belonged and of the affinity she felt with the people there. This can be seen in
her smiling face in the photos she posed for with the local children. Shortly before her death, having returned from a retreat with the Josephites in Lima, she had come back to the village bringing handmade ceramics
she made for the people there.
On the evening she died, Sr Irene was alone in the convent house when armed members of the Shining Path terrorist group came to the door and threatened to blow it in if she
didn’t come out. She stepped out and was escorted to the central plaza beside the old Spanish church where five men from the village had been made to lie face down on the ground while the captors conducted a mock
trial.
Sr Irene, seated by the fountain during this, was then harangued for being a Yankee imperialist and for her management of the foodstuffs Caritas had sent to the village – a form of aid to which
Shining Path objected.
Then, over the shouted objections of villagers that she was Australian not American, Sr Irene was pronounced guilty. She was then told to lie down and was the first in the group to be
shot, a girl soldier, reportedly, put a bullet in the back of the head.
Though the world has known many horrors before and since, the death of Sr Irene, the sunny, vibrant soul from West Australia’s wheat
belt, who, since the age of 17 had devoted herself to the work of Mary MacKillop’s Sisters, was like a hammer blow to the Josephites. They were shocked that one who was so loved, so giving and so fun loving, could
be taken in such an evil and unjust way.
More than 10 years after her death, Sr Irene McCormack’s life and personality continues to shine through Josephite communities as distant from each other as Perth and
Lima, in Peru.
As has been their tradition since her death, Sr Irene’s tenth anniversary was commemorated at a ‘human rights week’, highlighting a particular injustice suffered by Peruvians. This year’s
focus was the plight of child-workers, 25 of whom took part in the commemorative Mass.
This was celebrated at the church in El Pacifico and saw a procession symbolically ‘replant’ a small wooden cross
decorated with flowers. More practical commemorative activities included a general clean-up of the neighbourhood and plenty of dancing and singing – an aspect of Latin culture with which Sr Irene had great affinity.
This year too the Josephite Congregation in Lima accepted its first Peruvian novitiate – Sr Maria Cecilia.
There are also plans by the Huasahuasi villagers – Sr Irene is buried in the village – to
erect a monument to her.
The Sisters only stipulation is that any memorial should also carry the names of those who were killed along with Sr Irene.
In Perth, where there are school houses named
McCormack and her face looks down from a stained glass window, the new Catholic college in the suburb of Brighton will be named in her honour. Here too her anniversary was used to focus attention on justice issues.
A biography of the martyred Sister is also being written.
And as the grief at her loss recedes with time, Sr Irene’s spirit is coming to be associated with life-affirming works. Her renown is growing in ways
that could not have been anticipated. For instance, she is listed, along with other Religious from other countries among ‘the martyrs of Peru’.
Besides her life’s devotion to the Church’s apostolic cause and
to her fellow Religious, Sr Irene also left something specific behind by way of describing the spirit that called her to go to Peru.
On a hot January day at St Columba’s Church, South Perth, in 1987, she
explained to family and friends the revelation she received at age 40.
It was only then, she said, that “this overwhelming experience of the unconditional, gratuitous love of God became a reality in my life
– not just an intellectual conviction.”
The call to be a missionary was revealed to her through reflection and prayer. It was an irresistible beckoning and it spoke to her through her inner voice. “I must
listen and respond to be true to myself as Irene, as woman, as Christian, as Josephite, as world citizen … My belief is that if I fail to respond I am choosing spiritual death to not yield to the Spirit within.”
Used with permission Australian Religious newsletter June 2001
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