If you attended Calgary’s Pride Parade, you might have seen three fabulous creatures resembling nuns...on acid.

Down from Edmonton on a spiritual tour of our city, the Abbey of the Festival City Sisters Society - a mission of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence - added a splash of colour and excitement to our parade. With their white-face makeup, sparking habits, bejewelled and bedazzled outfits, they dispelled hatred and bigotry while dispensing "glitter blessings".

Attendees of Pride parades in Vancouver or cities in the USA will have encountered other missions and may know what the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are and what they do. They are an international charity, protest, and street performance organization using gender bending and religious imagery to bring attention to sexual intolerance, sexual education, and to highlight concerns relevant to the city of each mission. They first appeared in San Francisco in 1979 - expanding out across the States and world-wide since.

Or as Novice Sister Sissy Fister of the Edmonton order puts it, the Sisters are "...a contemporary order of Queer Nuns whose mission is to promulgate universal joy and expiate stigmatic guilt." While their appearance may be designed to shock people, strangely enough it allows a connection between the nuns and the people they "minister" more so than would be possible if the Sisters were in street clothes.

Part of the look is a custom stretching back to the 1970s. "The tradition of painting one’s face started in San Francisco as a means of protecting one’s identity," Sissy said. "Some of them were sex trade workers or they were protecting their identity in a politically tumultuous time."

The white-faced/kabuki look has been adopted as a common practise, and the face they put on has different meaning to each sister. As Sissy was told, the face and the look they create "...it’s like a shaman wrap or an amplification of what’s already inside of you...in terms of Jungian psychology, we’re engaging in archetype. We’re putting on a persona that does have this incredible power of drawing out of people, and drawing people toward us."

Usually it’s for picture requests, but often when they are doing their ministries (e.g. handing out condoms at events) people will confide in them troubles in their lives. "We are able to bridge a particular social barrier with people that is fascinating. People from professionals to sex trade workers. I don’t know what it is that opens people up..." but as Sissy maintains their appearance amplifies the draw of people to them. "The other thing that ties into that...part of why people feel so comfortable talking to us – when you engage your own inner freak, and you stand so far on one end of the freak spectrum, you give people permission to be who they really are."

The Festival City Sisters society first started up in November of 2011. It was really difficult – the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are something that’s nowhere near as common in Canada as it is in the States. "There was a really harsh reaction. People said What’s the matter with you? You’re wannabe drag queens...you barely look the part! But then as we kept going and as our image kept growing and as we developed our habits and became more comfortable in embodying this archetype we grew to an order of ten. We formally submitted papers to register as a society last month, and just a week and half ago were accepted by the greater order of the Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence to be a mission within their ranks."

Sister Sissy herself has had a long and varied relationship with religion. "I grew up Baptist, became an Anglican in my teens, and entered the postulancy for the priesthood, and then was rejected from it because I was gay." She researched other religions and formally converted to Judaism late in her late 20s, yet the one constant was this desire to marry spiritual fulfilment with everyday life in the work that she did. About a year ago Sissy started experimenting with drag and found the aspect of the persona and being able to express and break through to people in a different way was appealing.

A friend then introduced her to the Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence. "As I looked into it, I found an immense collective of people who were dedicated to community service, dedicated to building strong and vibrant communities that were loving and just" but also married that to the archetype of the sacred or ritual clown. As for the other sisters, some come to it because it satisfies a sense of vocation, a sense of fulfilment, and a sense of community. "What that looks like is for each sister to define for herself."

While the order uses religious imagery, what they are NOT doing is mocking nuns; they are emulating and translating an ancient tradition held by sacred women but adapting it for LGBT people and for the 21st century. "We have a visual ministry. We are striking at and targeting bigotry and intolerance as it relates to gender, sexuality, and religion. Gender – we’re men in women’s clothing. Sexuality – we’re gay. Religion – we’re wearing a nun’s habit. Just by our visual image alone it’s a psychological mindfuck for a lot of people." Sissy says that when people see them for the first time it’s amusing to watch their expressions as they are trying to process all of that. However, they are a spicier kind of nun...while they take vows, serve their community and have spiritual services, they don’t take vows of chastity, poverty and obedience.

As well, the variety of the LGBT spiritual experience is an element of the Sisters. As Sissy puts it, "We are the product of an exiled people. We are Jews, we are Muslim, we are Christian, we are pagan, we are Buddhists, we are whatever...who we are doesn’t necessary fit the mold." As a result, they have to form their own spiritual nature, Sissy asserts.

In addition, not "fitting the mold" is something the Sisters confront when they tackle the misconception they are drag queens. They’re not drag queens; they are queer nuns, as Sissy tells us.

"People have often asked How are you different from the court?" Sissy’s answer is that they are a community rather than a hierarchy. "We cry together, we laugh together, we come together once a month (at least) in community and have ritual and foster our spiritual growth. There is no hierarchy. Even though I have the title of Reverend Mother which is equivalent to president of a society...we are completely non-hierarchical."

They don’t just do fundraising for local charities – they have a harm reduction campaign, they are out in the streets. "HIV and AIDS is on the rise among gay men in Edmonton and we are out almost every weekend handing out condoms at the bars and bathhouses through our Condom Communion campaign where we dish out rubbers out of communion chalices. We do street theatre, we do a lot of things that are at the ground level. We’re a community of people, a spiritual people. When there are problems we work them out together. We hold up love as our biggest thing to working things out. We are inclusive....people with disabilities are welcome to join us, people from all religions are welcome to join us."

While there is the element of clowning in their appearance, the Sisters are also engaging the nun’s habit. "We’re there to lift them up. To sex-trade workers when we do our Condom Communion (we’re) just  loading up their purses with as many condoms as we can and talking about their journey and then having this intimate moment when we look into each other’s eyes and say Be careful tonight...and add a bit of light to their journey. It is a really very powerful medium and one I’ve never encountered before."

Essentially, while they take their work seriously, they don’t take themselves seriously. "Everywhere, people need to be able to have permission to own their freak a little bit, because in doing that they learn to love themselves a bit little more. And when you can love yourself a little bit more you can teach others how to love each other. And when you teach other people how to love each other you transform a community."

Finally, Sissy is not shy about just what they are hoping to do, regardless of what people think they are. "We are standing with people who are so marginalized...sex trade workers, people who are homeless...we are serving this community and we are not here to please anybody. That has never been our intention. We are here to ruffle feathers, we are here to shine a light on intolerance, and bigotry, and racism, and sexism and it is going to make a lot of people really angry. That is what we are here to do. Political activism is absolutely a part of what we do."

While it’s something we have not seen in Canada outside of Vancouver, it is a breath of fresh air and definitely something that is needed and worthwhile in Edmonton and...maybe Calgary. When Sister Sissy Fister, Sister Angel Kiss and Sister Roxie D’Cradle marched in Calgary’s Pride Parade, they say at least six guys came up to them, seriously considering joining the Sisterhood. Whether or not a sisterhood arises in Calgary, as Sissy puts it, "an order or a house will come up where it’s needed." Perhaps many people may not understand the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, but I believe their ministry and the good they can do is needed both in Edmonton, and maybe sometime soon in Calgary.