Nun describes horror of fatal assault on colleague

A nun who attended the Mass in St Lucia which was savagely attacked last Sunday has recalled the killing of her colleague, Sister Teresa Egan (72).

Sister Mel Kenny (75), from Clonmacnoise, Co Offaly, now the only Irish nun serving with the Order of St Joseph of Cluny on the Caribbean island, was interviewed by Dympna Moroney for yesterday's Morning Ireland programme on RTE Radio.

She said nuns from St Joseph's Convent had been attending Mass in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, as they normally did on a Sunday.

She and Sister Teresa had helped the priest, Father Gaillard, to distribute Holy Communion. "Then I saw, entering a door midway down the cathedral, a wall of fire as I thought, away above the heads of the people", she said.

She believed it was possibly an electrical fire, since she "could not see the human beings who were draped in white, masked completely, who were carrying the torches of fire".

She saw two men, but she "believed a third man came in afterwards . . . and that there was possibly a fourth person".

The "fire" moved from one side of the church to the other, across the centre aisle, creating pandemonium. People at the top of the church got out through the sacristy.

"Meanwhile, the persons carrying the torches were spraying people with kerosene and torching them, so that many people were going on fire."

She heard someone shout from inside `They are coming to the altar . . . they're at the altar now'. Then she saw the fire and saw Father Gaillard "come out with his vestments alight".

Then Sister Teresa was struck by something and "forced flat down to the ground on her face" outside the sacristy door.

Sister Mel went to help her colleague but felt a "terrible force" on the side of her head and was knocked to the ground. "I wondered whether my veil was on fire because I thought I saw hers on fire." She pulled the veil off and tried to get to her feet. "But I felt held, as it were, to the ground, and I couldn't move up." A few seconds later, she was able to stand.

People were trying to help Sister Teresa into an ambulance. "She looked in poor shape. I wondered whether she was alive at the time."

Sister Mel was taken to the hospital at the same time. She said Sister Teresa was brought in on a stretcher. About 10 minutes later Sister Mel saw what she thought was the same stretcher passing through the waiting room. "The body on it was completely covered. So I concluded she had passed away."

She believed the attack involved "a group of young people" and that it had been "of satanic nature, and their mission is to destroy the Catholic Church".

She felt outraged by the attack: "Everybody here is, because it was so senseless."

People generally lived together peacefully on St Lucia, she said. There had been "a sort of growing disrespect, maybe, for the authority in the Catholic Church, if you wish, for some time". It had been "noticeable", but nothing at all like what had occurred last Sunday.

"Many, many St Lucians are very angry that such a thing should have taken place", she said.

Sister Mel said that she was now feeling much better. She had "a lot of bruise blood to get rid of", but this would go in time. Her community on St Lucia "would miss Sister Teresa very much".