A Beauty Competition for Nuns

(What nunsense!)

Did you see that piece in the paper about an Italian priest holding a beauty contest with a difference - it will be open only to nuns? What a weird idea!

The Times online reported that Father Antonio Rungi, of Mondragone, near Naples, said he expected at least 1,000 nuns to enter the Sister Italia contest.

It would run online at first, but he hoped that it would become a "real pageant" along the lines of the annual Miss Italy contest. No bathing suits though, or snaps of the contestants draped over rocks hugging a beach ball or frolicking in the surf. Father Rungi, a moral theologian with his own blog, said that the nuns would not wear swimsuits or revealing outfits.

What he valued most in a woman was "inner beauty". Asked for his feminine ideal, he replied: "Well, I would say Sophia Loren."

Mmm, now there’s a woman who is more famous for her out-there assets than her inner beauty I would say ... when she played a nun in the 1972 movie White Sister, she was anything but au naturel and I’m surprised the panstick make-up didn’t stain her wimple.

Anyway, the well-meaning padre received criticism galore for his idea and has now scrapped the pageant. Among his flood of abusive emails was a writer who The Times reported, he said, “told me I would end up in Hell".

Perhaps it’s just as well. Rungi also would have put a age ceiling on the contest of 40 – but if you’re looking for inner beauty, why should you be less beautiful when the face is less smooth and the hair going grey?

Pity, though, I should have liked to have nominated our own Eastern Cape’s Sister Ethel of Missionvale Care Centre .. now that’s my idea of a truly beautiful woman, both inside and out.

1 comments:
sam said...
yes, you make a really valid point. It's hard to imagine how Mother Theresa would have fared in such a pageant, she was certainly no oil painting based on the criteria used in most contests, but it would be hard to beat her inner beauty. Clearly the misguided man has missed the whole point of becoming a nun, glad he has dropped the idea! (But then, maybe he knew all along that it was a non-flyer and just did it because he knew he'd get a ton of publicity, which, of course, he did!)
September 28, 2008 1:35 AM