The Singing Nun The Singing Nun Jeanne-Paule Marie "Jeannine" Deckers (17 October 1933 – 29 March 1985), better known as Sœur Sourire ("Sister Smile", often credited as The Singing Nun in English-speaking countries), was a Belgian singer-songwriter and initially a member of the Dominican Order in Belgium as Sister Luc-Gabrielle. She acquired world fame in 1963 with the release of the French-language song "Dominique", which topped the US Billboard Hot 100 and other charts. She was born Jeanne Paule Deckers in Laeken in 1933, the daughter of a pâtisserie shop owner, and was educated in a Catholic school in Brussels. She was a
The Singing Nun rejected the film as "fiction". Deckers did not see much money from her international fame, and her second album, "Her Joys, Her Songs", received little attention and disappeared almost as soon as it was released. Most of her earnings were in fact taken away by Philips and her producer, while the rest automatically went to her religious congregation, which earned at least $100,000 in royalties. Pulled between two worlds and increasingly in disagreement with the Catholic Church, she left the convent in 1966, to pursue a life as a lay Dominican of the order. She later reported that her departure