Dancing Nuns Take On Viral Dance Challenge To Help “Cheer People Up” During Difficult Times

Catholic Church members from Brazil to Ireland added their own performances to the “Jerusalema Challenge,” learning its dance steps before recording and publishing their work online. The resulting videos drew substantial attention, turning some of the participating women and religious communities into viral attractions in their own right.

An entry involving Redemptoristines and Redemptorists from the Irish religious order became one of the challenge’s latest widely shared performances. The nuns and priests followed notable contributions by the Swiss Police and Ireland’s gardai, offering another institutional response to a trend that had already spread around the world.

Master KG, a musician from South Africa, provided the track behind the challenge. He released “Jerusalema” on YouTube in the latter part of 2019, and the upload accumulated more than one million views within its opening week. The song’s success led people to post dance routines on TikTok and additional social platforms, producing a huge volume of related recordings.

The #JerusalemaChallenge tag developed as participants invited friends to make videos of their own. After initially becoming popular in South Africa toward the end of 2019, “Jerusalema” expanded its international reach across 2020 and rose to No. 1 on the “US World Digital Song Sales” chart. Potentially millions of videos around the globe were associated with the challenge.

Watch the full performance on page two