Consecrated

There is a photograph Marcela Taboada made inside the Discalced Carmelite convent in Puebla, Mexico. A novice, twenty-three years old, is playing volleyball during afternoon recreation. Her habit is in motion. The courtyard walls press close on every side. The enclosure is total. The joy is real.

Taboada grew up in Puebla and spent years getting inside these walls. She knocked on convent doors and had them slammed in her face. She carried a letter from the Archbishop and was still turned away. She came back. She lived periodically among eight orders — waking at 4:30 a.m. when the nuns woke, following them through prayers and chores until they slept at midnight — and what she found was not what the world imagines when it imagines nuns. She found women who were stressed by long schedules and released by laughter. Women who had come from rock bands and from domestic violence and from something they could only call a calling. Women who had chosen, in the fullest sense of that word, to give their lives away.

Taboada has said she always wants to know what goes on backstage. Whether she is photographing baseball or ballet, she goes behind the curtain. She is not interested in the presentation. She is interested in what the presentation costs. It took her years to understand what consecrated life costs — the 4:30 a.m. bell, the midnight prayer, the walls that do not move. She earned that understanding one slammed door at a time. Taboada knocked on convent doors for years before anyone let her in. Vance has been Catholic for six years and is now advising the Pope.

On Easter morning, April 5, 2026, the President of the United States posted a profanity-filled ultimatum to Iran on his Truth Social platform at dawn, on the morning Christians celebrate resurrection. He threatened power plants and bridges. He warned Iran it would be living in Hell. He signed the post: Praise be to Allah. When asked the next morning why he used such language on Easter, he said he used it to make his point. He said: I think you’ve heard it before.

That same evening, he posted an AI-generated image depicting himself as Jesus Christ. He deleted it Monday after backlash, telling reporters he thought it was meant to show him as a doctor making people better. On Wednesday he posted a second image: Jesus with his arms wrapped around him, an American flag in the background. He wrote that the Radical Left Lunatics might not like it but he thought it was quite nice.

Vance appeared on Fox News to characterize the Jesus imagery as a joke people weren’t understanding. He then traveled to Georgia, where he told a Turning Point USA audience that it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality. He elaborated: in the same way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.

The Pope being cautioned is Leo XIV, the first American-born pontiff, who had said that Jesus is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs. He was quoting Isaiah. A converted Catholic was advising the leader of his faith on the correct reading of scripture, before an audience organized by a political action committee, in an arena that was mostly empty.

In Puebla, inside the Convent of the Discalced Carmelites, Sister Reina Maria plays volleyball. She will pray again before dark. She will be up before dawn. She has given something over that she cannot take back, to something she cannot use for anything else.

What is happening in Washington is not a theological dispute. It is something older and more recognizable: men using the name of God to tell other people what God permits.

Taboada spent years earning the right to be inside those walls. The nuns told her they would pray for her. Some were afraid of her. Some considered her a kind of godmother. None of them asked her to leave.

Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal.

— Buddha (Dhammapada)

Forgive him who wrongs you; join him who cuts you off; do good to him who does evil to you.

— Muhammad (inscribed on the hilt of his sword)

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.

— Jesus (Matthew 5:9)

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

— Confucius (Analects 15.24)

All of these images are © Marcela Taboada, 2026.
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