A 75-year-old Irish nun has died in South Africa after being attacked during a robbery outside a Dominican convent in Port Elizabeth. It is the latest in a series of attacks suffered by the order, which is now reviewing its involvement in high-risk areas.
Sister Sheila Corcoran was buried on Friday in St Dominic's priory, Port Elizabeth. She died on July 18th. She had worked in the area for the previous 50 years.
The attack occurred some weeks ago at the door of the Holy Rosary convent during the late morning. Sister Sheila challenged a man with a knife who was robbing another member of the order, Sister Margaret Close.
Sister Sheila suffered a broken collar bone and shattered elbow. After making a partial recovery she died of pneumonia. The police are treating the case as murder.
In another incident Sister Margaret Wall, aged 60, was shot as she was driving a car in Nyanga township in Cape Town.
The Dominicans are planning to close the school attached to the Holy Rosary convent as part of a rationalisation policy in the eastern Cape. It was founded in 1867.
Sister Geraldine Smith, the congregation's prioress said the order has no plans to pull out of South Africa.
"It would be sad to move out of a young mission like Nyanga and the only reason for moving would be the safety factor," she said. "But we would be foolish to ignore a series of warnings."
Sister Geraldine is to visit South Africa in the next few weeks to meet members of the order and local community leaders. Crime was now "a fact of life in parts of South Africa and a lot of it is drugs related.
"The irony is that people were always safer in the apartheid years in the townships because of more organised internal structures." Sister Geraldine said that a lot of former community leaders were now in senior civil or political positions.
The loss of social motivation generated by the struggle against apartheid was a common phenomenon in post-colonial situations, she added, as could be witnessed by the rising crime rates in Northern Ireland.
Sister Sheila arrived in South Africa on her 21st birthday on March 3rd, 1949. She is survived by her older sister, Sister Madeleine Corcoran, who is also based in South Africa. Originally from Kerry, the sisters moved with their family to St Margaret's in Co Dublin. She has a brother John and sister Anne still living in St Margaret's and a sister Josephine in the United States.