5 Nuns Who Could Kick Your Ass

5 Carol Gilbert, Ardeth Platte and Jackie Hudson

So what does it take for a group of nuns to wind up on a Terrorist Watch List? Ask Sisters Carol Gilbert, Ardeth Platte and Jackie Hudson. They're peace activists who both wound up on the Maryland State Police's list of terrorists and were sentenced to a total of nine years in federal prison to boot.

It all happened after the nuns wanted to protest the war in Afghanistan but decided that standing on the roadside holding signs just wouldn't cut it. Instead, they broke into a Colorado military base that, oh by the way, housed nuclear missiles.

"What? We're pretty sure Jesus would've done it."

They made it to the silos themselves, pounded on them with a hammer (note: if you happen to encounter nuclear missiles in the future, DO NOT HIT THEM WITH HAMMERS) and painted crosses on the concrete using baby bottles filled with blood. Their own.

By the way, that was a Minuteman III missile in that silo, which is supposed to be 20 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

So how did these three sisters infiltrate the top-secret compound? That's the most frightening part of the protest: The atomic harbinger of doom was protected by a fence locked with a single chain. All the sisters had to do was use some bolt cutters. It was like breaking into a dog park.

Given their apparent masochistic tendencies, it's not surprising that the sisters chose to suffer in prison over appealing their case. They even requested to go to prison immediately instead of waiting for the schedule date. They're back out now, so if they shanked anybody while they were on the inside, they apparently weren't caught. We still wouldn't fuck with them, though.

4 The Nuns of Rutino, Italy

In 2008, a man named Aniello Esposito was in the middle of a dispute about his lease on convent-owned property. He was accused of illegally using the space to run a restaurant. Then, one night, Esposito heard that two of the nuns and a priest were trashing the place.

That's really not the kind of news you want to hear (though honestly it seems like the kind of thing you'd like to see at least once) so he ran over in hopes of having a nice, peaceful chat.

We're saying all Italians are gangsters.

That plan pretty much failed when the priest hit Esposito with a chair and the nuns started kicking him in the stomach. The other villagers saw what they later described as "the cast of Sister Act wailing on the guy from the pizza box."

They promptly called the police after they stood around and watched for at least 15 minutes and probably taped a good portion of it. Esposito was brought to the hospital with neck and abdominal contusions along with the most awesomely humiliating story of his life.

In a cruel move by the media, his was the only name released to the public.

3 Odette de Pougy

It doesn't get any more wholesome than this: Odette de Pougy was an abbess; the Mother Superior of an abbey of nuns.

In1265, the Pope Urban IV decided to build a church on the site where his father's shoe shop used to be. De Pougy, unaware or not caring that the Pope was her boss, informed him that the property belonged to the abbey and that he could not build there.

Unarmed with the knowledge we have on nuns today, he went ahead with it anyway because he was the freaking Pope. Back then, if you opposed the Pope that was like jabbing God with a sharp stick.

Is it cool with everyone if we just throw in a picture of a hot nun once in a while?

De Pougy didn't give a shit. In true nun fashion (in the context of this article, anyway) she brought armed thugs to the construction site to drive away the Pope's crew. Urban waited two years and tried again, only to witness the return of her personal army. The Pope struck back by excommunicating her entire abbey for 14 years.

He eventually got his church built... but he waited until de Pougy had died to do it.

2 Catalina de Erauso

When Catalina de Erauso was 15 and in pre-nun mode, she ran away from the convent where she was raised. It was the first time she had ever seen a street. It goes without saying that like most sheltered kids, the first taste of freedom made her crazy.

She changed her name, dressed in drag and, according to her autobiography, she "hustled, killed, maimed, and wreaked havoc."

After the thug life got old, de Erauso joined the Peruvian army, as a dude. This was all well and good, until she was severely wounded in battle. A priest came to give her last rites and it became that big reveal scene from every transgender comedy ever.

"Nothing to see here, sinner!"

She survived her wounds, though (Medic: "The enemy has a weapon that grows boobies on our men!") and with severely limited options for an alternate career, she went back to the Church and finally became a nun.

It's just that regular nun pictures are so boring.

The Pope even gave her special permission to wear men's clothing, which sounds very progressive until you consider how the Pope dresses.

The shoes. Look at them.

1 Theodosia of Constantinople

Theodosia was, you guessed it, a nun. She was from a wealthy family and used some of her inheritance to commission big, elaborate icons for the Church. The most famous was the one of Jesus that hung over the main gate of the palace. Seems like the sort of thing a nun would do.

Emperor Leo III, however, was not a fan of the fancy Christ. When he became emperor, he ordered that all religious images be destroyed because worshiping icons was wrong. It seems like destroying pictures of Jesus would also be wrong, but we're not experts.

Anyway, an imperial guardsman arrived with his ladder, and climbed up to take the icon down while Theodosia and a few fellow nuns stood close by. The sisters simply waited until he reached the top rung, then yanked the ladder away, causing the man to tumble to his gruesome death on the pavement below.

The guard's superior was nearby. The nuns picked up stones and bashed his brains in.

Upon hearing the news, Emperor Leo suppressed a smirk at the murder's Three Stooges-like nature and ordered the nuns to be decapitated. Theodosia suffered a more bizarre and gruesome punishment: she was stabbed in the throat with a ram's horn. Again, it seems like owning a picture of Jesus is less sacrilegious than stabbing a nun in the neck with a horn, but again we defer to his judgment.

See? That's something everyone can enjoy.

Theodosia came out on top, though, since she became Saint Theodosia, which means she can perform miracles. And she can summon a ram whenever she wants to poke at Leo III... in Hell.

For more religious assbeaters, check out 6 Saints Who Could Kick Your Ass. But don't get too depressed, because we'll show you which dinosaurs you can beat to make yourself feel like a man again (you know, if dinosaurs still existed), in 7 Dinosaurs You Could Take In A Fight.

And visit Cracked.com's Top Picks to see the sites whose asses we kick on a regular basis (while they're sleeping).