Move over, Whoopi and Julie Andrews: Real-life singing nun Sister Cristina is back, and this time, she’s covering Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” Luckily, the Vatican is now into talking openly about sex.
Fiery passion for the Lord isn’t exactly new to Christianity, as anyone who’s read the “Song of Solomon” knows, though it’s probably never been expressed in quite this way. But Sister Cristina’s adaptation is enough to make even New York heathens search longingly for the Holy Spirit.
“I chose it. With no intention to provoke or scandalize,” the nun told Italian paper Avvenire. “Reading the text, without being influenced by previous interpretations, you discover that it is a song about the power of love to renew people. To rescue them from their past. And this is the way that I wanted to interpret it.”
“For this reason we have transformed this song from the pop-dance piece which it was, into a romantic ballad,” she said. “Something more similar to a lay prayer, than to a pop piece.”
The 26-year-old sister first gained international fame for her performances on the Italian version of The Voice, which she later won. On the show, Sister Cristina performed “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “Living on a Prayer” — but nothing quite as racy as her cover of the Queen of Pop. (The original, of course, is decidedly less virtuous than this new adaptation.)
If her angelic voice and passion for the Holy Spirit is about enough to make you give up your bodily temptations for a marriage to God, the Catholic Church would be more than thrilled: Recruiting nuns isn’t easy these days.
