Clare Crockett (33) was killed in an earthquake in Ecuador in April 2016. The building she had been teaching music in collapsed.
Ms Crockett, from Derry, was a larger-than-life character who had been an actor before choosing the religious life. She turned down a chance to present on children’s TV channel Nickelodeon to become a nun.
She declared she would take her Holy Orders with the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother order with a “beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other”.
The mural of the nun has been painted in her native Brandywell in Derry, close to the Lady of Lourdes Grotto.
The painting was funded with money raised from the sale of candles dedicated to Sister Clare.
Ahead of a blessing service for the mural on Sunday evening, the nun’s sister Megan Nicell credited the people of Derry.
“They have been going on for a while about getting a mural done and they would have liked it beside the grotto,” she told the PA News Agency.
“Clare is originally from the Brandywell. We made Sister Clare candles and the money we raised from that got the mural done. It was the people of Derry and beyond who got the mural done.”
Ms Nicell described how pilgrims now travel from across the world to visit her sister’s grave in the city cemetery.
“A lot of people have said they have been praying to Clare and she’s interceded for them,” she said.
“A lot of people have come with IVF stories and people who couldn’t have children and went up to Clare’s grave and prayed to Clare, and now have their wee babies.
“We have a lot from all over the world.
“We were standing at the mural on Saturday and there were girls from America and Canada who were here to visit her grave. It’s just constant.
“My other sister Shauna, it’s just the two of us now, our phones never stop with people phoning for the candles. We were sending them everywhere – America, Glasgow, England, everywhere. People have great faith in her.”
Sister Crockett’s motto in life “all or nothing” is written on the new mural.
“Clare said she wrote a blank cheque every morning and whatever God wanted from her he wrote on the cheque and she gave it her all,” said Ms Nicell.
