Cathal BarrySinging nun wants to use gift to evangelise
Sr Cristina, the 25-year-old nun who wooed television audiences recently with her incredible singing talent, has won reality TV show The Voice in her native Italy.
The Ursuline sister surprised the four judges when she first appeared on the show in March with her rendition of Alicia Keys’ pop hit No One.
A native of Sicily, Sr Cristina arrived at the show accompanied by four sisters from her community, as well as her parents.
Responding to question after her initial performance, Sr Cristina said: “I came here because I have a gift and I want to share that gift. I am here to evangelise.”
The religious sister also revealed that she actually found her vocation thanks to her love for music and the stage.
As a teenager, Sr Cristina admits she had no place for God in her life. “After Confirmation, I distanced myself from the Church and I was angry with God."
I was constantly looking for “something that I wasn’t finding in my life, running nonstop without getting the answers I was hoping for,” she said.
Her mother told her about an upcoming musical production of the life of Sr Rosa Roccuzzo, the foundress of the Ursuline Sisters of the Holy Family, and Cristina landed the lead part of Sr Rosa.
“I had shown up to be able to sing and dance; but the challenges Sr Rosa had launched a century ago, about the gift of one’s existence, always kept ringing inside me.”
Torn between pursuing music or become a nun, she said she quickly found her way to God, “saying, ‘Here I am,’ like Samuel.”
She spent a year and a half in Rome as a postulant and then did her novitiate in Brazil working with children and young adults on the street in the outskirts of Sao Paulo.
“Music helped me make contact with them and I rediscovered singing as a way to praise the Lord, as something my soul needed, and as an instrument for touching people’s hearts,” she said.