Medjugorje makes model give up Milano

By Jakob Marschner on Sep 24, 2011

Ania Goledzinowska was a model for major companies, a tv presenter and an actress in Italian sitcoms. Now she is praying the Rosary and going to church while not cleaning rooms, peeling potatoes and tending to the chicken in her new life with a community in Medjugorje. And she has no plans of returning.

Ania Goledzinowska as a model

She had everything the world has to offer. Ania Goledzinowska changed a poor childhood in Poland for Italian high society life. Known as a model, a tv show host and an actress she appeared in the Italian version of Dancing with the Stars. She also made it to the headlines by jumping out of a cake at Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s birthday party in 2008.

Now all that belongs to the past. Since June this year the 27 years old Polish-Italian celebrity has lived alongside priests and nuns in a Marian community in Medjugorje. With lots of hard work and prayer,  her new life resembles that of old people in her native Poland way more than the Italian glamour through which she earned her name.

But Ania Goledzinowska does not want her old life back. In fact she has never been happier than now, she tells The Catholic Herald:

“The first time I was invited by a friend who also paid for the trip. I had a sort of an allergy for priests and the Church. But that first trip changed my life, so much so that for the following two years I was no longer able to live serenely, because I realised that I had never been really happy in my entire life.”

“What I was living was an illusion, not true happiness”, Ania Goledzinowska tells.

A plain wooden cross has replaced gold and jewels around the neck of Ania Goledzinowska

“I became depressed. I had a privileged life that I no longer liked. Instead, I wanted simple, normal things. One morning I woke up, called a friend and asked him to find me a place to stay in Medjugorje – or I would have jumped out of the window. I left Italy with two bags without telling anyone. And here I am.”

“My first thought was to come here just for a few days, because on June 25 I should have started a PR job in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, at the billionaire Flavio Briatore’s club. But June 25 was also the 30th anniversary of the apparitions in Medjugorje. After five days here I terminated the contract and have decided to remain”.

Ania Goledzinowska’s new life could hardly be more different from her old one:

“I wake up at five in the morning. We climb the mountain Podbrdo (Apparition Hill, ed.) to recite a rosary, then we go down, we have prayers, then Holy Mass. Until noon we work. I clean the rooms and bathrooms, then I do the ironing, or peel potatoes. We also have a vegetable garden and chickens. After that we recite another rosary. In the afternoon we rest, then at six there are other prayers”, she tells The Catholic Herald.

Ania Goledzinowska: "What I was living was an illusion, not true happiness. I became depressed. I had a privileged life that I no longer liked. Instead, I wanted simple, normal things"

But Ania Goledzinowska does not miss her high society life in Italy. Even if the contrast could hardly be more obvious:

“Absolutely not. Many of my old friends cannot comprehend what I am doing. They don’t understand how I can be happy doing what maybe my cleaning lady did before. In fact, I think I have never been so happy. I feel like when I was a child, when I was little and I lived with my poor and simple family”, she says.

“Everything I do makes me feel satisfied. I feel loved by God and by those around me, without having to disguise myself by what I have never been. I know that people are close to me for who I really am, not for profit. I left everything. I get dressed with the “clothes of Providence”, which sometimes the pilgrims leave here, because my clothes did not fit in Medjugorje. I could not come here wearing Chanel shoes.”

And so no one should expect Ania Goledzinowska to come jumping out of more birthday cakes. It is one among a number of things she would not do again:

From the career as a host for Channel 5 in Italy. Ania also appeared as a guest on other shows

“After Medjugorje I would not do many things, but I do not regret anything. I had to live the good and the bad things of my past in order to give testimony today that you can change, that real life is something else. Jesus came and died for sinners, not for healthy people. I am the first of sinners. I do not want to lose the privilege of enjoying the mercy of the Lord”, she tells The Catholic Herald.

“Love, forgive and do not judge. Just as you want to be forgiven, also others have the right to a second chance. Forgive, but do not do it for others: do it for yourself. You must empty the hatred and the resentment that you hold in your heart. Only then can God work in you. Otherwise he has nowhere to put the graces that he has reserved.”

“If you decide to come to Medjugorje do not expect to see the sun spinning or other miracles. The real miracle is your departure. Our Lady will take care of all the rest. Open your heart.”