A DEMURE Italian blonde in a sensible suit and no make-up told a gathering of clerics at the Vatican yesterday that she was giving up her glamorous life as a fashion model to devote herself to God.
Ms Antonella Moccia (30), who is considering becoming a nun, presented two images of herself to a congress on religious vocations before and after.
"I was the one you just saw," she told the audience after they had watched video clips showing her sashaying down the cat walk in an array of couture clothes. At one point, she appeared bare-shouldered in a bejewelled tiara, gaudy drop earrings and a low-cut dress.
"I have no regrets. I don't deny what I was before," said Ms Moccia, one of four people chosen to explain their callings to the congress. "God is not. . an alternative solution. God is love."
Ms Moccia, a tall, slender woman who showed for designers including Laura Biagiotti and Trussardi under the stage name Hella, overcame apparent shyness and spoke with passion. Her emotions overflowed when Pope John Paul greeted her at the end of the meeting. She kissed his ring and knelt for several seconds.
She seemed close to tears when the Pontiff, who was not present to watch her video, put his hand on her forehead to bless her.
The congress discussed how to make religious life attractive to young people who live in an increasingly material society and are reluctant to espouse the Catholic Church's strict rules on celibacy. The number of priests fell by nearly 13 per cent between 1978 and 1994 and the number of nuns by 24 per cent, according to an official report released last October.
Father Nunzio Spinelli, the priest who first encouraged Ms Moccia's vocation, told reporters earlier that he interviewed her several years ago for a Roman Catholic magazine on how, as a successful fashion model, she still had time for voluntary work. He said he had left her with the following thought: "If God wanted you all for himself, what would you do?"
"She told me later that she had no peace of mind after that," Father Spinelli said. "Now she has found it in her vocation."
Ms Moccia began working with the nuns from Mother Teresa of Calcutta's Missionaries of Charity order in a Rome convent, helping out at a soup kitchen