Religion: Brides of Christ

Last week, while Cloistered, first cinema ever taken inside a Catholic convent (TIME, June 1) was concluding a successful Manhattan showing, newspaper readers beheld the first close-up still photographs ever snapped in the U. S. to show young Catholic girls entering religious life. In the new chapel of Villa Lucia in Morristown, N. J., cameras clicked, floodlights glared when 21 Italianate young women renounced the world, took the simple vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, received the habit of the Maestre Pie Filippini (Religious Teachers of Philip) in the U. S. Motherhouse of that old Italian order.

While at least one priest joined in the picture-taking, the 21 postulants, brides-to-be of Christ, entered the chapel wearing white gowns, white-blossomed veils and carrying candles. In the sanctuary one by one they knelt, begging Bishop Thomas J. Walsh of Newark to admit them to the religious community. From each dark head full-fledged nuns removed the white veil. The Bishop substituted the shiny black sunbonnet-like headdress of the Maestre Pie. Now a novice, each girl walked back from the sanctuary in the black habit which she expects to wear for the rest of her life teaching in the order’s 14 schools.