From basketball prospect to TV abbess: the story of Mother Noemi

Erika Scarpa, 45, from Venice, before becoming Mother Noemi was a young basketball prospect in Serie B. At twenty, she left the court, her job at a glassworks in Murano, and her boyfriend to embrace religious life, as she herself recounts to Il Gazzettino.

Today she is abbess of the Benedictine monastery of Sant'Anna in Bastia Umbra, where she leads a community of nuns, some from the Veneto region like her, who have become unexpected television stars: the program "The Nuns' Kitchen" on Prime Video has brought them to the spotlight with recipes from an ancient cookbook found in the monastery's archives.

From the garden to the kitchen

Mother Noemi recounts that she is not actually an accomplished cook: her passion is the garden, where the abbess who welcomed her to the monastery decided to channel the energy of her athletic life. "I apprenticed with the elderly nuns, washing in pots and with ash," she explains. From there she came to become a master and finally abbess.

She still has something concrete left from basketball: there are three basketball hoops in the monastery, used for playing with children and fans who come to visit her. "This too is a way to evangelize," she says.

Unexpected success

According to Mother Noemi's account, the program's success surprised the nuns themselves first, who did not expect such a broad response: phone calls, emails, and people arriving at the monastery, including people in the hospital, those with Alzheimer's, and children in oncology. Despite the unusual media exposure for a cloistered religious, the abbess recounts that no reservations came from within the Church.

Mother Noemi concludes by saying she feels "fairly fulfilled" today, but still has one goal: to help improve female monasticism.