Irene McCormack

Sister Irene McCormack was a member of the Congregation of the sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. Born in Western Australia, on 21 August 1938, she was raised as a typical country girl on a farm in Trayning. After joining the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred heart she was sent to Peru to work as a missionary with the poor. It was here in 1991 that she was murdered by the Shining Path, a communist rebel organisation.

Early life

Irene McCormack was raised on a farm in Trayning, near New Norcia. She was said to be a very vibrant, determined and fun-loving girl. she received schooling from the Sisters of St Joseph. She was sent to boarding school at Santa Maria College where she is said to have developed her two great loves, serving God and educating young people. By the age of 15 she had decided that she wanted to be a nun. She joined the Sisters of St Joseph in 1956 and spent the next few years teaching in country areas of Western Australia.

Missionary in Peru

After 30 years of teaching in Australian schools she made her decision that she wanted to serve the poor. She arrived in Peru in 1987 for missionary work. Irene's first assignment was in a low income area in El Pacifico and Santa de Perola in the suburb of San Martin de Porres in Lima. On 26 June 1989 Irene left to serve in Huasahuasi, in the Andes Mountains about 200 km from Lima. Irene with her companion, Sister Dorothy Stevenson, were asked to supervise the distribution of emergency goods of Caritas Peru. Irene continued her ministry of providing library facilities to poor children who had no chance of obtaining books to aide in their school homework. Irene also trained Eucharistic ministers, as well as visited the parishioners in outlying districts of the Parish.

On 17 December 1989 the priests of Huasahuasi were warned that they were in danger so they and the two Sisters left the village for Lima. Irene, however, felt that the church could not abandon the villagers at this time so returned on 14 January 1990 with a companion. For 12 months Huasahuasi was without a resident priest. During this time Irene and Dorothy served the people, led the Communion services and provided leadership for the people of the area.

Irene's Death

About 6 pm on Tuesday, 21 May 1991 an armed band of members of Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path) entered the town of Huasahuasi. They entered a number of homes behaving in a terrifying manner. In front of their wives and children, four men were taken from their homes and brought to the central plaza of the town. Members of the gang also went to the convent of the Sisters of St Joseph were Irene was alone. Her companion, Sister Dorothy, who was also on their death list, was in Lima for medical treatment. The terrorists did not enter the convent but ordered Irene to come out, which eventually she did. She was also marched to the plaza and made to sit on the benches there with the other four men.

For about an hour the five victims were harangued, interrogated and shouted at. Several local people interceded for the lives of the five, saying they were good people and not wrongdoers. The terrorists retorted that they had not come to dialogue, but to carry out sentence. In particular, Irene was accused of dispensing 'American food' (the Caritas provisions) and spreading American ideas (by providing Peruvian school books!). The people's insistence that she was Australian, not American, was dismissed as being irrelevant. At one time a group of young people from the village gathered around Irene in the darkness and gradually moved her back into the crowd. But she was soon missed by the soldiers and was ordered back to face the terrorists. Eventually the five were ordered to lie face down on the terrazzo-tiled surface of the plaza. Each was shot once in the back of the head. Irene was the first to be killed - about six metres from the door of the church.

Since the bodies could not be moved from the plaza until authorities gave permission next morning, parishioners kept vigil by the body of Irene, burning candles and praying. Then a group of women laid her out in the sacristy and did for her what their families did for the men killed with her. On 23 May 1991 a huge funeral Mass was held and Irene was buried in the Huasahuasi cemetery in a niche donated by a parishioner.

"It was an awful, frightening death. She'd been pottering in her garden in the hill-top Peruvian village of Huasahuasi when two armed women broke into the convent. Sister Irene McCormack was alone, trapped upstairs with no escape route. It was a situation for which she would have been usually prepared, and her course of action would have been to "head out along the river and keep going". But, as Anne Henderson relays in crystalline prose, it didn't happen like that. She describes in gripping and terrible detail the last hours of Sister McCormack's life in May, 1991.

From the convent, she was taken to the town square where 300 people had gathered. Earlier, the Shining Path terrorists had stormed the village, looted homes and terrorised the townspeople. Now, in the glare of spotlights Sister McCormack and four men were tried in a "kangaroo court" and sentenced to death. Amid cries of "She's Australian, not a Yankee" and "Why kill these innocent people?" Sister McCormack and the others were made to lie on the ground. The head terrorist gave the order and a young woman began shooting them, one by one."

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References

* http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/03/23/24famccormack-aw.htm
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* http://web.imcc.wa.edu.au/content.asp?CId=14
* http://www.sosj.org.au/about/western_australia/i_mccormack.html
* http://www.womenpriests.org/honour/mccormac.asp