These NJ nuns are using social media to reach the masses

In May, a pair of Brazilian nuns were on a local Catholic TV show discussing a vocational retreat when it happened. Suddenly, the duo — in matching powder-blue skirts and white habits — broke into a joyous beatbox and dance routine.

Sister Marizele Cassiano provided the drumbeat soundtrack on her microphone as Sister Marisa Paula de Neves strutted for the camera. The viral video racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

They’re not the only nuns turning heads and raising eyebrows lately. A swath of TikTok sisters, known collectively as #NunTok, have earned celebrity for entertaining and enlightening videos about convent life. The “nunfluencers” include Sister Monica Clare, an Episcopal sister superior in Mendham whose videos on everything from celibacy to skincare have earned her more than 222,000 followers and 2.3 million likes.

Also in the news in recent years was Sister Susan Francois. The Bergen County nun tweeted a prayer a day at Donald Trump during his first term, despite her vehement policy differences with the president.

If that’s not enough of a change from the usually staid stereotype of nuns, consider Sister Lisa Maurer. The Benedictine nun gained fame over the past decade as an assistant football coach for the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minnesota.

While vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience remain at the center of these women’s experience, the image of the nun has undergone a sea change in recent years, in part thanks to social media. Women in religious orders have become less cloistered and more integrated into the broader world via their virtual megaphones. Their overall numbers may be shrinking, but nuns are no longer invisible in the popular imagination.

“You have to go out and meet young people where they are,” said Sister Guerline Joseph, a Salesian sister in North Haledon who posts regularly on Instagram and other platforms about prayer and spirituality.

“Our posts are very intentional,” said Sister Guerline, a member of the Catholic order’s social media team who posts under the account @salesiansisters. She is also associate director of the youth and young adult ministry in the Archdiocese of Newark.

“For us, social media is the modern playground where the young people hang out and that’s where we get to know them so we can evangelize.”

Nuns go viral for beatboxing, dance moves on TV

A pair of nuns surprised viewers with their unusual freestyling performance on Brazilian TV.

For years, statistics have documented the decline among U.S. nuns. Their numbers have fallen from 180,000 in 1968 to about 39,000 in 2022, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. Some orders have merged or shut down altogether. The average American nun is now about 80 years old.

Experts attribute the decline to a variety of factors, including the growing secularization of society, the impact of the clergy abuse scandals and shifting expectations for women’s roles in society.

Yet nuns have long been a subject of fascination in pop culture. S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate, a religious studies professor at Hamilton College in New York, has observed an array of depictions of sisters on the screen, such as the 1959 Audrey Hepburn drama “The Nun’s Story.”

“We had television shows and films, like ‘The Singing Nun,’ (1966) and ‘The Sound of Music’ (1965),” Rodriguez-Plate said. In the 1970s, the portrayals of nuns turned darker with films like ‘The Devils’ (1971) that made them seem more frightening. More positive portrayals came in the 1990s, with ‘Sister Act’ (1992) a musical comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg, and ‘Dead Man Walking’ (1995),” a drama starring Susan Sarandon as a nun who comforts a convicted killer on death row.

The author of “Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the World,” noted: “There’s a fascination with nuns because of the secrecy of their lives but also because of the gender aspect. People can’t imagine why a modern woman would leave everything to take vows of chastity and poverty and cut themselves off from the world.”

Because nuns live in a world that is so mysterious to people, “that becomes an empty space that they fill in with their own imagination. They make assumptions that nuns are repressed or unhappy.”

Hollywood used to portray nuns with a limited palette, generally as saintly figures disconnected from the modern world. Viewers rarely got a sense of a full personality, said Rodriguez-Plate. But that’s been changing.

One-dimensional understandings have softened and become more complex as nuns become active on social media and engaged in political movements and social justice activities. Nuns now crop up on our screens in ways that challenge stereotypes — like that beatboxing Brazilian sister.

Today, streaming series such as “Call the Midwife” and “Nine Perfect Strangers” portray nuns and ex-nuns as full human beings, flaws and all. In “Nine Perfect Strangers,” a former sister named Agnes grapples with a profound spiritual crisis. In “Call the Midwife,” several nuns navigate personal and professional challenges.

The stark visual of a nun in her habit has important symbolism for viewers and storytellers, noted Elizabeth Coody, an associate professor of religious studies at Morningside University in Iowa. “Christianity is declining in the U.S., but we are still grappling with that and what it means,” she said. “Nuns in horror movies represent the aspects of religion that scare us. A nun is an easy shorthand for anything religious.”

Pop culture hasn’t always been kind to sisters, who are often portrayed as dull or saccharine. “It’s always unexpected” when a nun does something cool, she said. “It’s played for laughs.”

Some sisters have attained a rock star status for sharing their unusual talents with the public while others have simply found new ways to connect with an audience through social media.

More: Can nuns be saved from extinction? Totowa’s Little Sisters of the Poor is latest casualty

We’ve come a long way from the nuns who sang “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” in “The Sound of Music,” voicing their frustration with Julie Andrews’ free-spirited character. If Maria were in a convent today, she’d likely be gaining social media adoration for her song and dance routines.

Back in North Jersey, Sister Guerline Joseph, a member of the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco, said many people she encounters are surprised when they meet her. “They tell me that I’m the first nun they’ve ever met in person,” she said, Often, they are curious about her life. She’s glad to help debunk misconceptions.

“Our mission is to educate the young, whether in or outside of the traditional classroom.”

As a child growing up in Haiti, and later in New Jersey, she considered various careers, including opening her own business, similar to her restaurateur parents. As a teen, she appeared in beauty pageants and in 2004 was crowned Miss Citronelle, a competition for contestants of Haitian descent.

But during her junior year in college, she felt a call to religious life. Her interest was piqued by an ad in a magazine for the Salesians. After graduation, she joined the order. It is one of the world’s largest, with over 10,000 sisters serving in 97 countries.

Sister Guerline likens her social media work to that of St. John Bosco, the Italian priest and educator who co-founded the Salesian Sisters in the mid-1800s.

“At that time, the printing shop was the new invention, so that’s what he used to evangelize. Social media is our print shop, where we meet young people.”