Former Female Basketball Star Now Cloistered Nun



In honor of the Women's Championship Game tonight...

ajc.com | Sports | Pennefather heeds her calling



Once upon a lifetime ago, Shelly Pennefather was the sweetest of shooting stars, an All-American at Villanova and the 1987 national player of the year. Since 1991, she has lived here, in the Poor Clare Monastery, at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in a very modest middle-class neighborhood.



Pennefather has taken her vows and the name Sister Rose Marie of the Queen of Angels. She renounced her worldly life, including a six-figure salary as a professional basketball star in Japan, to answer her true calling: To serve God as a cloistered Poor Clare nun...



...the Colettine Poor Clares are one of Catholicism's most austere orders. They sleep no longer than four hours at a time, eat one full meal a day and don't use phones, TVs, radios or any publications except religious texts. They sleep on a bed of straw; they're barefoot except for an hour each day, when they don sandals to walk into the courtyard, where they're allowed to converse with each other.



Poor Clares have little, if any, interaction with the outside world. During Lent, the order has virtually no contact at all. So when Sister Rose Marie spends this Sunday as she does every day -- primarily in prayer and meditation -- she'll probably be blissfully unaware of the Final Four semis.