Former model Olalla Oliveros ... and religious order fashions. Redux.

Olalla Oliveros.  Make-up did a lot.  I recall an article

concerning her conversion at Fatima when she said she was

thinking of becoming a nun.

Wearing your religion on your sleeve.

Olalla Oliveros is in the news again - kinda/sorta.  It's really more about the religious order she joined after a profound religious experience at Fatima.  Remember the story?

Just as her modelling career took off!  Supermodel.*

At the top of her flourishing career, a beautiful Spanish model has given it all up to become a nun.

Olalla Oliveros, a beautiful and well known Spanish model who did advertisements, television commercials, and worked as an actress has given up her career and decided to become a nun. Last month, Oliveros entered the semi-cloistered Order of Saint Michael. - NCR

The habit doesn't make the nun.

As I wrote last year... Olalla Oliveros' community of St. Michael the Archangel adopted a strange habit. The coloration and insignia seems a bit Disney to me. The male branch of the order wears the same habit.

Today we find out that not only the religious garb was strange, so were the founders and the religious life.  From CM Report:

Well, Oliveros may have wanted to become an ordinary nun, but the order she joined if far, far from ordinary.  It has been described as a sex cult with satanic practices.

It has been reported that the founders of Mandate and Order of Saint Michael Archangel have been arrested on sex and fraud charges.

The sect's leader, Feliciano Miguel Rosendo da Silva, and his right-hand woman, the self-described "nun" Marta Paz Alonso, were detained on Thursday in the town of Collado Villalba, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) northwest of Madrid.
An investigating judge will question the suspects "once several outstanding police procedures" are completed, the High Court of Justice of Galicia, in northwestern Spain, said in a statement.
The pair ran the sect, dubbed Mandate and Order of Saint Michael Archangel, in Galicia but moved to the Madrid region after Da Silva was expelled from the Roman Catholic diocese of Tui for "inapproriate moral behaviour". They then renamed the sect "The Voice of the Serviam".
Police accuse them of sexual abuse, money laundering, tax fraud, criminal association and crimes against moral integrity.
The arrest came a day after former members of the sect and their family members spoke out about alleged sexual, physical and psychological abuse by the two leaders, who they said got rich at their expense.

There are some pretty sordid details at the source. - CMR

I hope Oliveros got out before they got her involved.  It would be wonderful if this story proves to be untrue.

That said, the habits still look ridiculous.



*BTW:  I use the term 'Supermodel' only because it reminds me of a song.  However, the term is often used loosely today, indicating someone arriving at the pinnacle of success.  Those at the pinnacle of success are few - everyone else, pretty much just has the potential to be.  It's like 'film star'.  If no one ever heard of you before, you aren't really a star.  I remember when I first entered the monastery and mentioned to the assistant novice master that 'I gave up everything, I left it all behind to enter, I trampled the world under foot.'

Br. Benedict laughed out loud and said, 'No you didn't.'  Then he said something like, 'you only left the potential to achieve/acquire this or that behind.'

I had to laugh too.  Anyway - I think that's what a lot of people have to understand, and don't be too grand about 'giving it all up.'  Many are called, few are chosen, and given the chance, some will take everything back.