To be a nun, you have to take three vows: obedience, chastity and poverty. Twenty-four-year-old aspiring nun Alicia Torres has the first two down but she’ll need to dig herself out of debt before she can take the third one.
That’s where the running comes in. NPR reports that Torres, a graduate from Loyola University in Chicago, left school with a degree in Theology and Bioethics – and $94,000 in school loans. As a nun, Torres won’t earn a salary, so she’ll have to wipe away her debts before she can don a habit. She knew that if she tried to take a regular job to pay down the debt, it might take ten years before she could enter the convent. So she’s getting creative.
Torres signed up to run the Chicago Half-Marathon and created a Web site to market the so-called “Nun Run.” It worked. The race happened last weekend and Torres managed to raise $17,000 in pledges. She’s hoping to get the rest from her job at Chicago’s Archdiocese and from friends and family.
God willing, she’ll meet her goal, but we don’t think she’ll have a problem with that one.
Photo courtesy NJ Tech Teacher, via Flickr.