Popular Spanish Model Olalla Oliveros Becomes Catholic Nun After 'Earthquake' Experience
A well-known Spanish model and actress has become a nun of the semi-cloistered Catholic Order of Saint Michael, leaving her flourishing career years after she had an "earthquake" experience on a visit to Fatima.
The 36-year-old model, Olalla Oliveros, has done advertisements, television commercials and worked as an actress, but she has now entered the Order of Saint Michael, according to National Catholic Register.
She recently turned down an offer to play a lead role in a high-budget film.
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While Oliveros hasn't spoken much about the move, she was quoted as saying that she had an "earthquake" experience on a visit to Our Lady of Fatima some time ago. She found the experience weird initially, but could not shake the image of herself dressed as a nun.
She didn't describe the experience but said she has made the choice after much thought.
"The Lord is never wrong. He asked if I will follow him, and I could not refuse," Oliveros explained.
Catholicism is witnessing growth in Spain, according to reports.
Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas says the number of Spaniards attending Mass increased from 12.1 to 15 percent between 2011 and 2012, and the number of Spanish Catholics attending Mass weekly grew by a further 23 percent between 2012 and 2013, according to an article in First Things.
Female religious orders are also growing.
Annually, about 400 Spanish girls become non-cloistered sisters, the article adds, citing the number of women at the Poor Clares Convent of the Ascension in Lerma which rose from 28 in 1994 to 134 in 2009. One of the Lerma nuns, Sister Verónica, created her own community, Jesu Communio, the article says. The Vatican approved the rapidly growing order, known as the "sisters in jeans" because they wear denim habits, in 2010.
However, celebrities elsewhere have also become nuns in the past.
About five years ago, one of Colombia's top models, Amada Rosa Pérez, became a Catholic nun.
"Being a model means being a benchmark, someone whose beliefs are worthy of being imitated, and I grew tired of being a model of superficiality," Pérez told the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo. "I grew tired of a world of lies, appearances, falsity, hypocrisy and deception, a society full of anti-values that exalts violence, adultery, drugs, alcohol, fighting, and a world that exalts riches, pleasure, sexual immorality and fraud."
