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Los Angeles - Of all the unlikeliest candidates to move into a convent, pop singer Katy Perry may top the list.
The flamboyant I Kissed A Girl singer is known for her skimpy costumes, busy romantic life and songs about drinking and menages a trois.
She was raised not as a Catholic, but as a Pentecostal Christian, and has since rejected her faith - leading her preacher father to reportedly refer to her in sermons as a "devil child".
But Perry, 30, wants to pay the Archdiocese of Los Angeles $14.5m in cash for the former Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Retreat House, a convent atop a hill in Los Angeles' hip Los Feliz neighbourhood.
Photos published by US media show a sprawling Mediterranean-style villa with an inviting hourglass-shaped swimming pool. Perry said she wanted to live there with her mother and grandmother, "sip green tea, and find herself", the Los Angeles Times reported.
In September 2014, the deal appeared to be done - until elderly nuns in the order learned who Perry was.
"For what should be obvious reasons coming from Catholic nuns," they objected to the sale, their attorneys wrote in a court filing, according to media reports.
"In selling to Katy Perry, we feel we are being forced to violate our canonical vows to the Catholic Church," Sister Catherine Rose Holzman wrote in a complaint in May to the archdiocese, The New York Times reported.
Holzman and another nun decided instead to sell the convent to a Los Angeles developer, Dana Hollister.
The archdiocese sued to block that sale and give the deed to Perry instead. Then the nuns asked for a restraining order against the archdiocese.
On Monday, a judge told the warring sides to work out their differences ahead of a July 30 court date.
At issue is who has the right to sell the property - and to control its proceeds.
For her part, Perry has reportedly made efforts to win the sisters' hearts, according to two of the nuns cited by the Los Angeles Times.
She met with them in May to explain her plans for the property. Dressed conservatively, she sang them the Christian hymn Oh Happy Day.
Then, she showed them her "Jesus" - tattooed on her wrist.
