Argentina’s “TikTok nun” is bringing Catholicism to the masses

With a wide smile on her face, Josefina Cattaneo, 28, attempts to do the cumbia dance TikTok challenge with a friend. It’s winter in Argentina, and she’s wearing a Gap sweatshirt over a nun’s habit.

Her black veil sways gently from side to side, like long, silky hair, as she dances loosely to the music. At the end of the video, a written message appears: “God loves you all!!”

Sister Cattaneo belongs to the Niño Jesús Catholic congregation in central Argentina and has more than 204,000 followers on TikTok and 104,000 on Instagram. In the four years since she started using social media, she has become known as the “TikTok nun.”

Cattaneo started dabbling in social media in 2020, when she took a break from her in-person duties during the first phase of the Covid-19 lockdowns. That’s when she started sharing her beliefs online.

“I just couldn’t stay quiet; it’s not who I am,” Cattaneo told Rest of World . “I started praying to God, and TikTok came up.”

Cattaneo started with a simple, modest video of her moving to a trendy TikTok beat. Four years later, her content blends preaching, debunking myths about how nuns live, and communicating her beliefs digitally through dance challenges , collabs with other religious TikTokers , and ping-pong Q&As with fellow nuns . She also posts the videos on Instagram.

The support of her friends and family, she said, has been critical. “Liking what I do, saying nice things, supporting me — that’s really helpful.”

What has been “crazy,” she said, is to see that she has followers who aren’t Catholic.

Ingrid Molino, a 32-year-old Uruguayan UX designer, told Rest of World she came across Cattaneo’s content on Instagram. It led her to search for the nun’s TikTok account and scroll through her videos there. Though agnostic, Molino said she found Cattaneo’s content interesting and funny.

“It’s like meme-based content,” she said. Despite not feeling drawn to religion herself, Molino says religious people not close to the church might benefit from seeing someone so “relatable” — at a time when the Catholic Church is struggling to reach the younger generation.

The students at the school where Cattaneo works treat her as something of a celebrity. “They come and show me [my reposted videos], and I love it,” she said. “I love being a light in the middle of the world because that’s Jesus’ light too.”

Her fame has also brought criticism. Cattaneo said she has had to take down several videos in the past for having an “untraditional” approach to religion or for revealing things about living as a nun that generally go unknown. She declined to share specifics.

“Not everyone’s going to like what we do,” she said. “But I try to stay off drama.”

“Jesus is summoning all of us but not just in real life — also in this digital continent that’s now a part of our lives,” said Cattaneo. “And I’d rather be a part of it, speaking about Jesus, instead of staying aside.” ▰

Lucía Cholakian Herrera is a freelance journalist covering human rights, politics, and technology based in Buenos Aires.