Nun Anna Nobili used to make her living as an exotic dancer. Doubtless she would now view her former bump and grind routine as "sinful" - although she admits that she liked it because she was "the center of attention."
The picture she paints of her former den-of-iniquity days is tabloid material. She claims her nights were "filled with evil, with sex and with drugs" and that she was no less than a drug herself... "I was being used as a drug by people who wanted to see me dance."
When you read Nobili's accounts of her stripper years you could be forgiven for wondering if she was the only stripper available in Italy at the time.
She's still trying for the attention, but now in the role of "ballerina for God." No pole involved or unseemly gyrations.
The miraculous move from peeler clubs to the Sister Workers of the Holy House of Nazareth occurred when Nobili visited the shrine of Francis of Assisi in 2002. It's unclear exactly what transpired, but whatever life-altering experience was involved it prompted the former artiste to lay aside her thongs and heels in order to get religion.
The way Nobili describes 'seeing the light' makes it sound like the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus - an analogy she does in fact make. The experience was so overwhelming she began to dance in public - "I started dancing and people were looking at me [center of attention thing again] - I got on the train back to Milan and I felt as if God was in me." Of course the experience could have been purely psychological in origin or possibly substance enhanced. We only have Nobili's word that it was a "divine" something-or-other.
These days Nobili practices something called "mystical" choreography - and performs "Holy Dances" while fully clothed.
No longer a magnet of attention for inebriated trolls in smoky peeler joints, she does her thing in the Holy Cross in Jerusalem Basilica no less - where a 'Holy Dance' titled La Bibbia Giorno e Notte (The Bible: Day and Night) is due to be performed.
Nobili performing with a cross
Nobili told La Republica "My aim is to pray using my body."
Among the guests will be Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, the Pope's roving Culture Department tsar. No word if the performance will be videotaped for more general circulation in the Vatican.
