By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi, Dec 1, 2021: The Franciscan Immaculatine Sisters congregation says police and autopsy reports indicate suicide as the cause of one of its members’ death in the northern Indian state of Punjab.
Sister Mary Mercy was found hanging at 6 am on November 30 in the chapel of the congregation’s Sadiq convent in Faridkot, a district in Punjab, some 130 km southwest of Jalandhar diocesan headquarters.
A December 1 circular from Sister Maria Indira, the Italy-based congregation’s Indian delegate vicar, says her people in the Sadiq convent immediately informed the police, who came and investigated the death. Later an autopsy was done with the permission of the deceased nun’s parents, the circular clarifies.
“The police examination and the postmortem report have revealed the death as a case of suicide and ruled out anything unusual,” says the circular in Malayalam language. It promised all cooperation to the police further probe.
The circular also says the congregation would make all arrangement to take Sister Mercy’s mortal remains to her native place and busy in her parish cemetery, as mentioned in the 30-year-old nun’s suicide note. The note had asked pardon to all sisters in the congregation as well as her family members, the circular said.
Sister Mercy, native of St Andrew’s Parish of Arthunkal in Alappuzha district, joined the 140-year-old congregation in 2008 and pronounced her first vows on August 2, 2014. The congregation established its first house in Kerala in 1991.
A year after her vows, Sister Mercy was sent to the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. She was among four nuns sent on August 21, 2018, to open a convent in Faridkot. Along with social service she was doing her master’s course in social work. “She had gone home for vacation in May and on her returned started preparing for the final profession. She was planning to return to Kerala for the final profession,” the circular explained.
The delegate vicar described Sister Mercy as a quiet and service-minded person. “The untimely death of Sister Mercy has plunged all our houses into deep sorrow like her family members,” said Sister Indira, who is based at Eda Kochi in Kerala.