The Singing Nun

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The Singing Nun was Jeanine Deckers (born Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers; October 17 1933 – March 31 1985), a member (as Sister Luc Gabriel) of the Dominican Fichermont Convent in Belgium.

Popular in the convent for her music, she was encouraged by the other nuns to record an album in 1963. One song from that album, Dominique, soared to the top of the charts in the United States. Overnight, the Dominican nun was an international celebrity with the stage name of Soeur Sourire (Sister Smile). She gave concerts and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

In 1965, a movie called The Singing Nun was made about her, starring Debbie Reynolds in the title role — Deckers rejected the film as "fictional".

As the 1960s progressed, Deckers stopped performing in favor of a more rigorous devotional life. In 1967, she left to pursue her musical career, though most of her earnings went to the convent. Despite her renewed musical emphasis, Deckers gradually faded into obscurity, possibly because of her own disdain for fame: her second album, released in 1967, was titled I Am Not a Star.

Although she was deeply religious, she was also increasingly critical of the Roman Catholic Church's conservatism and eventually became an advocate of birth control. She also agreed with John Lennon's statements about Jesus in 1966. In 1967, she recorded a song entitled Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill — a paean to contraception — under the name Luc Dominique.

Her musical career over, Deckers opened a school for autistic children in Belgium with her companion of ten years, Annie Pecher. In the early 1980s, the Belgian government claimed that she owed back taxes; she countered that the money was given to the convent and therefore exempt from taxes. She and Pescher both committed suicide by an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol, and were buried together, which fueled the suspicion that she was a lesbian.

External links and references

Florence Delaport: Soeur Sourire: Brûlée aux feux de la rampe (1996)
D. A. Chadwick, Florence Delaport: Music From the Soul: The Singing Nun Story (PublishAmerica ISBN 1413750761, August 2004)
[The curse of the Christmas single] (The Guardian, Fri 10 Dec 2004)
[The Straight Dope: Did the "singing nun" commit suicide with her lesbian lover?]
[The Singing Nun] [Swinginchicks.com]

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