The princess was late for Mass.

Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis pulled a long dark coat over her silk scarf and necklace of pearls and hurried through the medieval monastery that is part of her 500-room palace. It was a chilly autumn night in Bavaria, with rain spitting outside, as she arrived at the chapel to pray.

The room glowed red, lit from a crypt below where her husband and other family members lay in their coffins. The princess knelt and soft bells sounded. Her dinner guests, a British baroness and her husband, slipped in to join her as a priest led prayers.

Princess Gloria, 64, who burst onto the international scene in the 1980s in jeweled tiaras and a multicolored mohawk, has since evolved into a conservative Catholic with ties to the European far right. An anti-abortion and anti-immigration provocateur in her native Germany, she has welcomed a newcomer into her circle as a hero: Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was her guest at her annual music festival in the summer of 2023.

The visit opened up a world of European nobility to the justice, and helped the princess promote her causes and her festival. She sees it as a natural friendship.

“I met him as a Catholic, and I realized that he’s a judge who is pro-life,” she said in an interview at her palace in Regensburg, home to the music festival. “So for me, that was a great thing, because very few people I know are pro-life.”