Jackson and Lais Dognini married in March of this year after leaving cloistered life behind. Photo / Laís Dognini
Jackson and Lais Dognini married in March of this year after leaving cloistered life behind. Photo / Laís Dognini
A Brazilian couple have tied the knot after both leaving their vocations – as a nun and a priest in the Catholic Church.
Jackson and Lais Dognini originally met six years ago while they were leading lives of monasticism, O Globo reports, before eventually reconnecting and finding love inthe secular world.
Lais shared their story to Instagram in September as she announced they had wed in March this year.
“He wanted to be a priest and went to the seminary, I wanted to be a religious (I don’t use the word nun because I think it’s ugly) and I went to the convent”, she said of her and Jackson’s former lives.
The novice nun spent two years in a Carmelite convent before she left to treat her depression, a fateful decision that would later spark a romance between the two.
Lais and Jackson Dognini met while they were both living lives of religious servitude. Photo / Lais Dognini
While the couple crossed paths during their years of theological devotion, it wasn’t until Jackson sent Lais a departing message of prayer that they really connected.
They began to message one another frequently, though Jackson was still studying in seminary school and believed Lais would soon return to the convent.
According to El Globo, after Jackson decided to leave his own training, they grew even closer and soon made plans to meet.
“Our first meeting was to go to mass together, go out to dinner and then go to the movies. That day, he was going to ask me to marry him, and I didn’t know anything. It was St Therese’s day.”
They had begun a relationship by April 2024, were engaged by October 2024, and married by March 2025, the New York Post reports.
“It seems little, right? But let’s face it, we are already adults, and we know what we want from life,” Lais wrote on her Instagram.
According to O Globo, Lais has clarified that they didn’t leave cloistered life to be together.
“I had already left the convent three years ago, he had already left the seminary by discernment of the vocation. We had no contact, we even lived in different states”, she said.
“It was only after that that we started to relate, so there were no scandals.”
