A model nun

The word ‘vocation’ has a particular meaning in Catholic parlance: it refers to a specific state of life to which believers understand that God is calling them. Some people are inclined, by God’s grace, to follow Christ as husbands and wives, others feel called to the single state without seek Holy Orders or taking religious vows. Still others hear God inviting them to become sisters, brothers, priests or deacons. I’d like to tell you about one of these calls to a particular way of life in the Church.

Antonella Moccia, is an astonishingly elegant 31 year-old; tall, blonde, with sparkling blue eyes. She is also the principal character in something quite extraordinary. Until five years ago she was one of the favourite models of fashion designers such as Laura Biaggiotti, Mila Schön, Egon Von Fürstemberg, Giorgio Amani and other big names in the fashion world. I had always dreamed of becoming a model since I was a little girl, says Antonella, who has modelled all over the world. She entered the colourful world of fashion when she was 18 years old, and soon learned all about the tricks of light and shade, the excitement backstage before a show, and the breathtaking rhythm of life between fashion parades.

But one day she began to hear an insistent call ‘from outside’, the mysterious voice of God. This call became more insistent over the years, through her tortuous journey which saw the pain of the loss of her father and gradually led her, without her realising it, to leave behind her friends, her work and her high class lifestyle in order to discover the poor, those cared for by the Missionaries of Charity, the Order founded by Mother Teresa. She made a conscious and radical choice to embrace her faith in Christ, and in her turn she joined the religious Order of the Fraternity of the Holy Spirit.

The extraordinary fusion of two different worlds, seemingly incompatible, which are forced together - the world of high fashion and the world of faith, as she loves to say, became public knowledge on 9 June 1997, on the occasion of the First European Congress of vocations. That day , in the Vatican’s Paul VI Congress Hall, Antonella spoke before an audience of five thousand people, including the Pope who was watching on closed circuit television, telling them of her extraordinary conversion.

Now her experience has been made into a book. I don’t repudiate anything from my past, because my past is what I am, writes Antonella, referring to some of the clichés regarding the so-called ‘ephemeral kingdom’ which is fashion. It is not true that the fashion world does not thirst for God, she reveals, adding, Even those who move in fashion circles can reach out to others, open themselves and show themselves as they really are, and sometimes even speak about God, faith and the search for the sacred. Not many people would know that some of my friends who are models recite the rosary before going on to the catwalk and after they have finished work... Today, when I look back, I feel that I fully belong to the Church and that the merit for this should also go to my work experience. I do not wish to withdraw from that world even now. If, when I go to speak to young people, they talk about some singer or actor, I too want to express a point of view.

Such a story may shock some people in the fashion world or among religious workers. And yet, why should God not be present in the fashion world, a world which devotes itself above all to the search for beauty?

Given the vocational content of this editorial, we would like to take the opportunity to invite to all those people who are interested in following in the footsteps of Saint Francis, to take a careful look at the back cover of this issue of the Messenger of Saint Anthony.