It’s 7:30 a.m. on a sunny May morning in Rome on a side street outside the studios of Italian state broadcaster Rai. A live audience standing behind metal fencing is watching a lithe group of nuns, one with a mustache, who slowly creep out from a row of white closet doors. 

They start dancing, hugging and pirouetting to a ballad belted out by a young Tuscan pop singer. Then the dancers, dressed in Catholic sisters garb, begin playing basketball.