Authorities are investigating the homicides of two Catholic nuns at their home in MS, police said Thursday.
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The Boston Globe quoted an investigator saying that there were signs of a break-in in their home, and one of the victim’s vehicles was missing.
Their bodies were found in a home they shared in Durant, on Castalian Springs Road.
This is what Sister Paula Merrill said in February in a video created by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth highlighting Sister Paula’s work in Durant, Mississippi as a nurse practitioner at a medical clinic.
“They were sweet, very loving people, easy to get along with”.
Authorities have said they found a auto that was missing from their home and towed it to a crime lab for analysis. “Because we are gospel women, please also pray for the perpetrators”, SCN President Susan Gatz said in a statement.
Father Greg Plata, who worked with the sisters, paid tribute to them after what he called a “senseless” tragedy.
Sister Paula Merrill, Smith said, had been ministering in the community for about 30 years.
The two nuns provided nearly all the care at the clinic and cultivated relationships with drug company representatives, who often left extra free samples, the clinic’s manager Lisa Dew said.
She went to Catholic school throughout her childhood, attending Our Lady of Nazareth Academy in Wakefield, run until 2009 by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.
Church officials have said Held was a member of the School Sisters of St. Francis based in Milwaukee while Merrill was a member of the Sisters of Charity based in Nazareth, Kentucky.
Police found two bodies in the home of Sister Paula Merrill, SCN, and Sister Margaret Held, OSF, in Durant, Mississippi.
The SCN statement said Merrill was born in MA, and moved to the south as a second-year novice with the order.
She moved to MS in the 1980s.
“Pray in gratitude for the precious lives of Sisters Paula and Margaret … they served the poor so well”. Sr Held was renowned locally for her skill at baking.
Sister Paula saw children and adults and helped in other ways.
“We do more social work than medicine sometimes”, she said. “Sometimes patients are looking for a counselor”.
The sisters were involved in caring for the community after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 left much of the town without power for weeks.
They were skilled in stretching resources, and routinely produced fantastic dishes out of what seemed like a very small home garden, said Sam Sample, lay leader of St. Thomas Catholic Church in Lexington, where the sisters were members.
The small congregation at St Thomas typically gathered on Thursday nights for bible study and a meal.
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The two were nurse practitioners in Holmes County, where they worked with families who are struggling financially. She told us they were too shaken up to speak today but hope to be available on Friday to address the media.
