Contest Closed Before Opened

So sorry to have to tell all the religious looking forward to competing in the "Miss Sister 2008" contest, but the pageant has been "suspended."

Fr. Antonia Rungi, the Passionist priest stationed in Mondragone, Italy who organized the Internet contest, said, "It was not at all my intention to put nuns on the catwalk." Yet he was pressured into halting this unique event.

"My superiors were not happy. The local bishop was not happy, but they did not understand me either," Father Antonio Rungi told Reuters by telephone.

Imagine the superiors of the nuns when they receive invoices for pageant portfolio photographs when there's no pageant. Sigh. Mother superiors all over the world would be so much more understanding if the cost for the pictures led to a sister winning a crown that could then be used for the motherhouse's Infant of Prague. Sigh.