Encore Arlene Violet returns to Nunsense BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

In the spirit of Roger Williams, maybe the Independent Man atop the State House dome should be wearing glasses, a big grin — and a nun’s habit. Former Sister of Mercy Arlene Violet, born and bred in South Providence and with the broad vowels to prove it, is one of the most unrelentingly feisty souls the state has ever produced. Appreciating the fact, voters made her the first female Attorney General to be elected in America, from 1984 to ’86. Violet became known as "Attila the Nun" for her aggressive prosecutions.

She’s reprising her role as Sister Mary Maverick in Nunsense, which is at the Providence Performing Arts Center through Sunday, February 22. The perpetually running comedy is set up as a variety show fund-raiser by the Little Sisters of Hoboken. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary national tour, five well-seasoned comediennes have been tapped: Kaye Ballard, Georgia Engel, Mimi Hines, Lee Meriwether and Darlene Love. Violet will sing and dance and has written a rap song poking fun at local figures and political events.

Violet, 60, has had a roller coaster relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. Parochial-school-raised from elementary through high school, she entered the convent at age 18 and remained a nun for more than two decades. In that capacity, she became a lawyer, worked as chief counsel in the consumer fraud division of the Attorney General’s office, and was threatened with excommunication for bringing suit against a Massachusetts bishop. Once in the top spot herself, she brought to prosecution the first three local cases of priests sexually abusing children. Her office also investigated a widespread housing agency scandal and directed prosecution against Claus von Bulow in his second trial, among several bulldog prosecutions.

The popular talk show host — heard Monday through Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. on WHJJ (920 AM) — explains it all to us in a recent interview.

Q: How was your experience in the show the first time? Did the actors treat you like one of the gang right away?

A: Oh, it was great, it was great. They were really wonderful. Everybody was really younger than I was, so they were starting out at the beginning of their careers. I was sort of like their mother superior, as it were. I was invited about a year later to one of their weddings.

Q: With your background as an nun, in rehearsal did they grill you as an expert witness?

A: They didn’t grill me as an expert witness, but they all would complain about how long it would take them to get into the habit — of course, I could get in it in like three minutes (laughs). Practice makes perfect!

Q: Old habits are hard to break. So tell us about your years as a Sister of Mercy. Were you one of those kids who wanted to be a nun from the time you were little?

A: Yes, I was. I entered the Sisters of Mercy at age 18 and was there for 23 years. It was a great experience. That’s one of the things, too, that I like about Nunsense: while it’s very funny, it has basic respect for the contributions of religious women.

Q: In parochial school, did you encounter any of the dragon lady nuns of legend who went around smacking knuckles with rulers?

A: You know, I heard about them but I never really had them in school. Maybe they were putting aside the ruler by that time. I often wondered to what degree that was more exaggeration than reality. I certainly knew early in my career, when I was teaching, the nuns that were my colleagues teaching in schools, none of them reverted to that kind of behavior. So it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. Like every legend, there’s an element of truth, but I’m not sure that it wasn’t exaggerated over the years.

Q: You chose the Sisters of Mercy order because of their social justice commitment?

A: Right. A very activist order. The idea was to respond to the unmet need, which meant that nobody had done it yet. They were constantly challenging you to reach out and do things that make you stretch. So if a nun wanted to teach in Australia in the outback, they’d say, "OK, go ahead and go." I wanted to do inner city work, so: "Sure, go ahead, do that." During that inner city experience, it was back in the days of buyer beware, caveat emptor, and people were buying lemons, particularly in poor neighborhoods. There was a lot of crime and violence and whatever. So that’s what led me to go to law school.

Q: Was leaving the order an ordeal for you?

A: Yes, it was; very tough. Because I wasn’t leaving for any reason other than the fact that the canon law had changed. When I ran for attorney general, I did so because we had an incredible organized crime problem, a public corruption problem, and the drug cartel was operating out of Central Falls. I thought it was an unmet need to try to clean all of that up, plus give victims some rights. They didn’t have any rights back in those days, to be informed at each discrete level, of what was happening with their case.

When I ran the first time and lost, my order had OKed it, because they had the right under church law to do that. But when the second election came around, the church law had changed right before the election. As painful as it was, I could have kept the name of being a Sister of Mercy but walked away from a fundamental spirit of responding to unmet needs, or I could have kept the reality of the commitment and lost the name.

Q: Are you still a practicing Catholic?

A: Well, I guess it all depends on what you mean by practicing. I consider myself a spiritual person. The way they handled the priest sex abuse and all the cover-up and that kind of thing — I’m not practicing in the sense that I don’t give 10 cents to the official Church. Although my pay, in quotes, for this performance will go to the Sisters of Mercy. And I contribute to a lot of charities. But I protest the Church’s handling of the sex abuse investigation and the cover-up. So not practicing, in the sense of not giving them 10 cents. And, obviously, I don’t always subscribe to the official positions of the church, on birth control and other issues. That’s why I say it’s a matter of interpretation.