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    Why Are Nuns Either Saintly, Seductive or Sadistic?

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    In uncertain times, religious sisters are often invoked as vessels for collective doubt.From Chaucer’s supercilious Madame Eglantine in “The Canterbury Tales,” with her spoiled lap dogs and secular French airs, to Ryan Murphy’s ruthless Sister Jude in 2012’s “American Horror Story: Asylum,” a woman who wears a red negligee under her habit and is not above indulging in some communion wine, fictional portrayals of nuns have long captured and confounded the imagination. How could it be otherwise? The sisters’ vows of chastity and poverty and the air of secrecy that shrouds their cloistered lives are all intriguingly antithetical to modern Western values of sex, money and fame. Many of us have also encountered nuns in our actual lives — I spent much of fourth grade facing a corner of the classroom at the punitive behest of Sister Rosalia — and are left with what I’d call a primal fascination. But if the aesthetic interest in nuns is an enduring one, it’s also true that every few years, like fashion trends or viral flus, nuns have a particularly concentrated cultural moment. We’re living in one now.Perhaps the starkest, knottiest contemporary depiction of nuns is the playwright John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt: A Parable.” First staged on Broadway in 2005, it recently wrapped another run there, directed by Scott Ellis. (Three of the cast members have been nominated for Tony Awards.) The play tells the story of the iron-fisted Sister Aloysius (Amy Ryan in Ellis’s revival), the principal of a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, who, based on the hunch of a guileless novice, Sister James (Zoe Kazan), accuses Father Flynn, the parish priest (Liev Schreiber), of making advances toward the school’s only Black student (whose mother was played by Quincy Tyler Bernstine). It’s a detective drama with no resolution, a morality tale with an insoluble ambiguity at its heart. Ellis says he was drawn to stage the play because its titular emotion feels more crucial than ever in our increasingly polarized world. “Given everything that we are in society right now, the black and white of it all, the red and the blue,” he says, “doubt is the most important place to live.”Liev Schreiber as Father Flynn (left) and Amy Ryan as Sister Aloysius in the recent Broadway production of “Doubt: A Parable” by John Patrick Shanley.Joan Marcus/Polk & Co., via Associated PressRebecca Sullivan, the author of the 2005 book “Visual Habits: Nuns, Feminism and American Postwar Popular Culture,” says that “in times of deep doubt,” we tend to see cultural representations of nuns crop up. She notes that the cascade of nunsploitation films of the 1960s and ’70s — a campy, provocative, mostly European cinematic subgenre in which nuns are sexualized, tortured or possessed — occurred at a time of great social upheaval. Second-wave feminism was afoot, secularism was on the rise and the Second Vatican Council, held between 1962 and ’65, had ushered in numerous church reforms: Nuns, for example, were encouraged to get out of the convent and serve the community and were no longer required to wear habits. The liminal status of sisters — they were independent women who also exhibited a “subversive subservience,” as Sullivan puts it, to a patriarchal institution — made them rich and complex symbols, ciphers for exploring the era’s feelings about women at large.We’re in another profound moment of disruption, particularly when it comes to women’s rights and roles: Roe v. Wade has been overturned; tradwifery is a trend. And thus we’ve seen a new spate of arty nunsploitation films, with “Immaculate” (2024), starring Sydney Sweeney, being the latest. (Others include Paul Verhoeven’s 2021 erotic lesbian nun satire, “Benedetta,” and Rose Glass’s taut 2019 psychosexual horror, “Saint Maud.”) Directed by Michael Mohan, “Immaculate” follows a devout Midwestern novice, Sister Cecilia, who arrives at a gloomy convent in the remote Italian countryside and mysteriously becomes pregnant, leaving church elders to conclude that she’s carrying the savior. In a turn reminiscent of “Rosemary’s Baby,” the sinister Father Tedeschi more or less imprisons Cecilia in the dark, labyrinthine building. For all its gory, sexy-nun fun, the film raises all-too-familiar questions about female bodily autonomy in oppressive male institutions. But this nun, a feminist heroine for the 21st century, is the agent of her own destiny: Unlike so many sisters in the first wave of nunsploitation films, she frees herself.Cate Blanchett and Aswan Reid in the 2023 film “The New Boy.”via Cannes Film FestivalWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Nun With a Musical Gift, Dies at 99

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      Born in Ethiopia, she seemed headed for a career as a concert pianist before she chose a monastic life. Her intricate piano recordings gained a cult following.“Honky tonk” and “nun” are words not often seen in combination, but in 2017, when the BBC broadcast a radio documentary about the pianist and composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, “The Honky Tonk Nun” was the title of choice.It was a testament to the music she made, both before and after she became a nun in the 1940s, music that drew on her classical training but seemed to partake of rhythm and blues, jazz and other influences. The relatively few who discovered it knew they had found their way to something singular.The musician Norah Jones was one who did, especially after hearing the album “Éthiopiques 21,” a collection of Sister Guèbrou’s piano solos that was part of a record series spotlighting folkloric and pop music from Ethiopia.“This album is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard: part Duke Ellington, part modal scales, part the blues, part church music,” Ms. Jones told The New York Times in 2020. “It resonated in all those ways for me.”The documentarian Garrett Bradley used Sister Guèbrou’s music in the soundtrack of “Time,” her acclaimed 2020 film about a New Orleans woman’s fight to get her husband out of prison. Alex Westfall, writing in Pitchfork about that movie and its soundtrack, called the music “the sonic equivalent to infinity — untethered by conventional meter or rhythm, as if Guèbrou’s instrument holds more keys than it should.”Fana Broadcasting, Ethiopia’s state-run news agency, announced on March 27 that Sister Guèbrou had died in Jerusalem. She was 99. The announcement did not specify when she died.“Hers were some of the most extraordinary 99 years ever lived on this earth,” Kate Molleson, who made “The Honky Tonk Nun” and wrote about Sister Guèbrou in her book “Sound Within Sound: Radical Composers of the 20th Century” (2022), said on Twitter.Sister Guèbrou (the title emahoy is used for a female monk) was born Yewubdar Guèbru on Dec. 12, 1923, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. (She changed her name when she became a nun.) Her father, Kentiba Gebru Desta, held several titles, including mayor of Gondar, and her mother, Kassaye Yelemtu, was socially prominent as well. At age 6, Sister Guèbrou was sent to a boarding school in Switzerland. There, she said in the BBC documentary, she saw a concert by a blind pianist that made a strong impression.“It remained in my mind, in my heart,” she said. “After that, I was captivated by music.”She studied violin and piano and then returned to Ethiopia in 1933 to attend the Empress Menen secondary school. After Italy, under Benito Mussolini, invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and forced its emperor, Haile Selassie, into exile, Sister Guèbrou and her family were deported to the Italian island of Asinara and then were relocated to Mercogliano, east of Naples.When the Italian occupation ended and Selassie was restored to power in 1941, Sister Guèbrou, still a teenager, accepted an offer to further her music studies in Cairo, though the Cairo climate did not agree with her. She eventually returned to Ethiopia, working for a time as an assistant in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Ms. Guèbrou in an undated photo. After studying music in Italy and Cairo, she underwent a spiritual reassessment and became a nun, joining a monastery in Ethiopia. “I took off my shoes and went barefoot for 10 years,” she said. via Buda MusiqueShe had a chance to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London and seemed on the way to a career as a concert pianist, the BBC documentary says, but that prospect fell through for reasons Sister Guèbrou would not detail. That led her to a spiritual reassessment of her life, and by her early 20s, she was a nun. She spent 10 years in a hilltop monastery in Ethiopia.“I took off my shoes and went barefoot for 10 years,” she told Ms. Molleson. “No shoes, no music, just prayer.”She returned to her family and by the 1960s was recording some of her music; her first album was released in Germany in 1967, according to the website of a foundation established in her name to promote music education.She made several other records over the next 30 years, donating the proceeds to the poor. In the mid-1980s, she left Ethiopia and settled into an Ethiopian Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem, spending the rest of her life there. Information on her survivors was not available.Sister Guèbrou came to much wider attention in 2006. The French musicologist and producer Francis Falceto, who had been releasing albums of Ethiopian music from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s in a series called “Éthiopiques” on the Buda Musique label, made a collection of her solo pieces No. 21 in that series.“While the sound of this musician’s pensive, repetitive drawing-room études owes something to Beethoven, Schumann and Debussy — although they are studded with little arpeggios special to Ethiopian music — there is a dusky, early-blues quality to much of it,” Ben Ratliff wrote in a review in The Times. “If you’ve heard some jazz, you could think it was written by Mary Lou Williams or Duke Ellington in their own moments of making their own quiet, original drawing-room music.”Ilana Webster-Kogen, an ethnomusicologist at SOAS University of London with an expertise in Ethiopian music, broke down one track from the “Éthiopiques” album, the inviting yet complex “The Story of the Wind,” which is less than three minutes long.“First, there is a lot of classical technique in there, particularly in the interplay between the right and left hands,” she said by email. “You might think you’re listening to a sonata for those first few seconds because there is so much harmony between the right and left hand. But then it becomes immediately clear that she’s improvising, so the genre signals jazz.”And then there’s the meter of the piece.“Most Ethiopian music is written in 6/8, which you can count either as duple meter or triple meter (1-2-1-2 or 1-2-3-1-2-3),” Dr. Webster-Kogen wrote. “If you try to count, you’ll see that she really fluctuates between duple and triple pulse. This would be innovative coming from any musician, and sure, there are other Ethiopian musicians who do this — now — but the idea that they got it from a woman who has dedicated her life to prayer and charity … anyone can see that this is unusual.” More

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      Janet Mead, Nun Whose Pop-Rock Hymn Reached the Top of the Charts, Dies

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      Her upbeat version of “The Lord’s Prayer” was an instant hit in Australia, reached No. 4 in the U.S. and was nominated for a Grammy (it lost to Elvis Presley).Sister Janet Mead, an Australian nun whose crystalline voice carried her to the upper reaches of the charts in the 1970s with a pop-rock version of “The Lord’s Prayer,” died on Jan. 26 in Adelaide. She was in her early 80s.Her death was confirmed by the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide, which provided no further information. Media reports said she had been treated for cancer.Sister Janet’s recording of “The Lord’s Prayer,” which featured her pure solo vocal over a driving drumbeat — she had a three-octave range and perfect pitch — became an instant hit in Australia, Canada and the United States. It soared to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 during Easter time in 1974, and she became one of the few Australian recording artists to have a gold record in the United States.The record sold more than three million copies worldwide, two million of them to Americans. Nominated for the 1975 Grammy Award for best inspirational performance, it lost to Elvis Presley and his version of “How Great Thou Art.”Along with Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” famously covered by the Byrds in 1965, “The Lord’s Prayer” is one of the very few popular songs with lyrics taken from the Bible.Sister Janet was the second nun to have a pop hit in the United States, after Jeanine Deckers of Belgium, the guitar-strumming “Singing Nun” whose “Dominique” reached No. 1 in 1963. She died in 1985.When stardom struck Sister Janet, she was a practicing Catholic nun teaching music at St. Aloysius College in Adelaide. The video for “The Lord’s Prayer” was shot on campus.A humble novitiate who devoted herself to social justice, she donated her share of royalties for “The Lord’s Prayer” to charity. She had long helped raise money for the disadvantaged, the homeless and Aborigines and worked on their behalf.She later described the period of her record’s success as a “horrible time,” largely because of demands by the media.“It was a fairly big strain because all the time there are interviews and radio talk-backs and TV people coming and film people coming,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Shunning the spotlight, she declined most interview requests and all offers to tour the United States.She had already achieved some local notoriety by staging rock masses at St. Francis Xavier’s Cathedral, long the hub of Catholic life in Adelaide. Her goal was to make the Gospel more accessible and meaningful to young people, which she succeeded in doing by presenting religious hymns in a rock ‘n’ roll format and encouraging participants to sing like Elvis or Bill Haley. Her masses drew as many as 2,500 people and enjoyed the full support of the local bishop.Janet Mead was born in Adelaide in 1938 (the exact date is unknown). She was 17 when she joined the Sisters of Mercy and became a music teacher at local schools.She studied piano at the Adelaide Conservatorium and formed a group, which she called simply “the Rock Band,” to provide music for the weekly Mass at her local church.She was making records for her school when she was discovered by Martin Erdman, a producer at Festival Records in Sydney. The label had her record a cover of “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” which the Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan had written and sung for a Franco Zeffirelli film of the same name about St. Francis of Assisi. It was released as the A-side of a 45; “The Lord’s Prayer” was the B-side.But disc jockeys in Australia much preferred “The Lord’s Prayer.” Listeners called in demanding to hear it again, and stations gave it repeated airplay. It became one of the fastest-selling singles in history.Its phenomenal success led to Sister Janet’s debut album, “With You I Am,” which hit No. 19 in Australia in July 1974. Her second album, “A Rock Mass,” was a complete recording of one of her Masses.Sister Janet later withdrew from the public eye almost entirely, and her third album, recorded in 1983, was filed away in the Festival Records vaults. The tapes, including a 1983 version of “The Lord’s Prayer” and covers of songs by Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Cat Stevens, were rediscovered by Mr. Erdman in 1999 and included on the album “A Time to Sing,” released that year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Sister Janet’s hit single.Sister Janet explained her philosophy of using rock music to amplify religious themes in her liner notes for the album “With You I Am.”“I believe that life is a unity and therefore not divided into compartments,” she wrote. “That means that worship, music, recreation, work and all other ‘little boxes’ of our lives are really inseparable, and this is why I believe that people should be given the opportunity to worship God with the language and music that is part of their ordinary life.” More

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      Cannes Film Festival: The Director of ‘Showgirls’ Takes on Lesbian Nuns

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      Paul Verhoeven defends “Benedetta,” which is based on a nonfiction book and set in the 17th century: “I don’t really understand how you can blaspheme about something that happened.”CANNES, France — Forgive them, Father, for they have sinned. Repeatedly! Creatively! And wait until you hear what they did with that Virgin Mary statuette.The bad girls I’m referring to are Benedetta and Bartolomea, two 17th-century lesbian nuns at the center of the new drama “Benedetta,” which debuted Friday at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s a delicious, sacrilegious provocation from Paul Verhoeven, the director of “Basic Instinct,” “Showgirls” and “Elle,” and at age 82, Verhoeven proves himself to be as frisky as ever.Based on the Judith C. Brown nonfiction book “Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy,” the film follows Benedetta (Virginie Efira), a young nun so convinced that she is the bride of Christ that she even dreams about a hunky, bare-chested Jesus flirting with her. And why wouldn’t he? Benedetta is a blond bombshell who looks less like a pious 17th-century nun and more like a Charlie’s Angel in disguise, and when the pretty peasant Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) arrives at the convent, she starts making eyes at Benedetta, too.Nun-on-nun action ensues far faster than you might expect, given that this convent is lorded over by a strict mother superior (Charlotte Rampling) and Benedetta is prone to visions that end with the manifestation of stigmata. But as her religious ecstasy turns ever more orgasmic, Benedetta eventually finds a steamier, more earthbound way of chasing that high. “Jesus gave me a new heart,” she tells Bartolomea, exposing one breast. “Feel it.” (Look, they did foreplay very differently in the 17th century.)Once their sexual relationship heats up, these nuns find their habits easy to take off but hard to break. Eventually, a statuette of the Virgin Mary is whittled into a sex toy and after Benedetta and Bartolomea, er, apply themselves to it, the audience at the Cannes press screening applauded the film’s blasphemous nerve. Verhoeven has always had a gift for making the ridiculous feel divine, and now the reverse holds true, too.Still, at the news conference for “Benedetta,” Verhoeven insisted the scene wasn’t blasphemous at all.“I don’t really understand how you can blaspheme about something that happened, even in 1625,” he said, offering up excerpts from Brown’s book. “You cannot change history, you cannot change things the happened, and I based it on things that happened.”Verhoeven with Efira, center, and another cast member, Clotilde Courau, at the Cannes premiere on Friday. Johanna Geron/ReutersPerhaps, but Verhoeven’s version still gives the truth a bit of a makeover, since Benedetta and Bartolomea always seem to be sporting eye makeup, foundation and lipstick. Though their faces are never nude, their bodies frequently are, and would it surprise you to learn that when these lithe nuns strip down, they’re as toned and well-manicured as a Playboy centerfold? In the convent, God may be watching, but Verhoeven’s gaze trumps all.If any viewers ding “Benedetta” for serving up religious commentary with a side of cheesecake, Verhoeven remained unbothered. “In general, when people have sex, they take their clothes off,” Verhoeven said matter-of-factly. “I’m stunned, basically, how we don’t want to look at the reality of life.”His actresses expressed no qualms about their sex scene. “Everything was very joyful when we stripped off our clothes,” Efira said, while Patakia told the news media that when Verhoeven is directing, “You forget you’re naked.”Still, they never lost sight of just how much they’d be required to push the envelope.“I remember reading the script to myself and thinking, ‘There is not a single normal scene,’” Patakia said. “There is always something destabilizing.” She added, “So, I immediately said yes.” More

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      ‘Rebel Hearts’ Review: Sisters Act Up

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      This flashy, feel-good documentary follows a group of progressive Catholic nuns in 1960s Los Angeles.Few institutions notoriously resist change like the Roman Catholic Church, which to this day upholds rules of celibacy and continues to forbid the ordination of women. So for some, it may be surprising to learn that the church’s iron-fisted rule has long been met with resistance.Such a struggle is captured in “Rebel Hearts,” Pedro Kos’s feel-good documentary about a particularly gutsy group of nuns who took inspiration from the social upheavals of the 1960s to fight against exploitation by their male superiors.Combining archival footage with paper doll-esque animation and a flurry of talking-head interviews gathered over two decades by Shawnee Isaac-Smith, one of the film’s producers, this documentary traces the controversies and trailblazing feats of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart, whose social activism and participation in civil rights and workers protests upended notions of the fragile, cloistered nun.Led by Anita Caspary, these women — and the liberal college they ran in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles — were considered dangerous by Catholic hard-liners like Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, the entrepreneurial head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese who the documentary claims staffed his many religious schools with unpaid, unqualified young nuns. Caspary and her unruly flock (including the pop artist Corita Kent, whose screen prints and drawings were often the cause of scandal) collectively sought autonomy — voting, for instance, to rescind the habit requirement.An unrelenting pop music soundtrack vests the story with a cheesy rah-rah sensibility, while the film’s breakneck pacing hinders proper reflection of any single event or anecdote. The onslaught of information certainly impresses by illuminating a rich and not-often-discussed slice of feminist history, but the execution is distractingly flashy and gratingly unfocused.Rebel HeartsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More