With deep sadness, the Sisters of Mercy of Newfoundland mourn the sudden death of Sister Kathrine Bellamy on March 23, 2010. Sister Kathrine’s legacy is a rich and deep one. We are grateful for her gift of music composed and played and taught, for her leadership within the community at large and within our Congregation, for her love of history, for her commitment to interdenominational action for justice, for her passionate love for our Congregation and, perhaps above all, for her ministry with poor people.
Kathrine was linked with Mercy globally through her many contacts with sister archivists as she composed the history of Mercy in Newfoundland in her book, Weavers of the Tapestry. She presented our story at Trocaire in Dublin in 1981 and the story of our founder, Sister Francis Creedon, at an international archivists’ meeting in Dublin in 2003.
She was buried from the Basilica of St. John the Baptist where she had been choir director and organist for parish liturgies and functions for twenty-four years. Approximately seventy-five choristers (from the Basilica Choir and former Mercy Convent School Choirs) sang the sacred songs she had taught them; musicians (former students), through organ, violin, and trumpet, filled the Basilica with the sacred music she loved so deeply and had taught so well. It is fitting that this Mercy musician and historian would be buried on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, and the date (in 1843) on which Sister Maria (Mary Joseph) Nugent became the first sister of Mercy professed outside the British Isles. Kathrine’s motto during her religious life was “May it be done to me according to Your word.”
Sisters of Mercy from the United States, Ireland, Australia and Peru joined the Newfoundland Sisters of Mercy for ceremonies of reception to the novitiate and of renewal of vows.
