The nuns of Belorado shake their wimpled heads in disbelief at the fate that has befallen them decades after they took the veil.
Branded heretics, excommunicated and facing eviction, they are at the heart of a schismatic scandal that has gripped Spain and made international headlines.
The nuns are locked in a legal battle with the church over the ownership of three convents. They claim the Pope is a heretic and that the ecclesiastical authorities failed to defend them from a rival abbess who called them lesbians and prostitutes.
The tranquil setting of their grand 15th-century convent, in the rolling hills of northern Spain, belies the bitterness of the dispute. “We have suffered persecution and calumny,” Sister Belén, 51, says through a barred window in the Convent of Our Lady of Bretonera, in the room where the cloistered nuns are permitted under their rules to greet guests.
Long gone are the harmonious days when the nuns won a coveted prize for making truffle and chocolate delicacies. Sister Paloma, 47, who like all the sisters still wears the habit of a Poor Clare nun, says they are “besieged” by their enemy, Mario Iceta, the Archbishop of Burgos.
They believe he sends spies to observe them and that he has bugged their mobile phones, which they leave in a separate room as a precaution before speaking to The Times. The nuns are on alert, they say, as several days ago a “spy” drone flew over their convent.
Sister Isabel de la Trinidad, right
“Don Mario”, as they call the archbishop, is pitted against a formidable adversary: Sister Isabel de la Trinidad, 59, the mother superior. “We are at war with Don Mario but also with all that is the Vatican and Rome, all the hierarchical structure,” she says. “It is a criminal organisation.”
Hostilities with the archbishop erupted in May when Isabel announced theological differences with Rome. The community of Poor Clare sisters, then numbering 15, published a 70-page letter declaring that the Roman Catholic Church had lost its way after the Second Vatican Council in 1962 and that every pope since Pius XII has been a heretic.
They said that their new bishop was Pablo de Rojas, a sedevacantist who was excommunicated by Iceta in 2019.
Excommunication and an expulsion order swiftly followed. Does Isabel regret leading her nuns against Rome? She scoffs at the suggestion: “We are totally happy with our decision, it’s our crusade. We have a clear determination to show the Vatican has been a fraud for the last 50 years.”
Her response to accusations of heresy? “We are not at all heretics,” she replies. “Heretics make doctrinal mistakes and what we are saying is all the Catholic truths of the last 2,000 years.”
The Vatican excommunicated ten of the nuns, sparing the eldest five who were deemed too old to be part of the heresy. Family members of the eldest nuns, who range in age from 86 to 100, say they have been unable to remove them from the convent.
“Ah yes, the kidnap of the poor elderly nuns,” says Isabel with a laugh. “This is absurd. They are our elders, some of them have been here for over 60 years. They are not forced to be here. We are family and they depend on us for everything, for administration, for food, everything.”
The dispute first started over property. The nuns condemned as “persecution” the church’s decision to “block” their request to sell a convent that they claim is theirs in Derio in the Basque Country. They said the convent was possessed by “preternatural” spirits that affected the nuns physically and mentally. They wanted to use the money from the sale to buy another convent in the region, in Orduña.
The convent of Santa Maria de Bretonera in Belorado, Burgos
The Archdiocese of Burgos said that the rebel nuns had agreed to buy the convent in Orduña for €1.2 million. They paid €100,000 for it and committed themselves to regular payments that were not made. The mother superior claimed to have a benefactor who would pay the remainder, put the property in his own name and then resell it to the nuns when they got the money from the sale of their convent.
The church had “suspicions that this person was not a member of the Catholic Church” but in fact the “false” bishop, de Rojas, and so rescinded the sale. They are in a legal dispute with the church to remain in control of the three convents.
It is a clash of wills. “Don Mario is enraged, arrogant, he has always shown disdain for women, especially nuns,” the mother superior says. “He does not tolerate that a woman stands in front of him telling him that we have the right to determine our life and that he has no business in it. He wanted to submit us to his will by force.”
Property is only part of their beef with the church, however. “During the pandemic the church banned holding masses for congregations and we realised this undermined our fundamental role, when historically it was during plagues that we helped people,” Belén says. “We started to study and found that the church hierarchy had been infiltrated by Freemasons for decades.”
She adds: “The current Pope says that all are equal before God, including non-believers, and that the Virgin was not immaculate. That is heresy.”
Sister Paloma adds that a neighbouring mother superior began spreading “lies that we were lesbians, prostitutes and had had abortions” and the church had not defended them against the slander.
In May, everything came to a head when the mother superior’s tenure was up. Her critics say that the dispute is all about her staying in power, but Isabel laughs at the accusation. “They have been waiting to get rid of me as they could not before my mandate ended, but we acted before they did. It has nothing to do with me wanting to remain in charge, absolutely not.”
Sister Paloma has, like many other nuns from the convent, been excommunicated
ISAMBARD WILKINSON
Such has been the furore that the mother superior’s deputy, Sister Paz, left the convent a few weeks ago “due to the pressure”, Belén says. Another nun departed two weeks ago “to seek another path”.
The remaining 13 nuns are more isolated than ever and, they say, short of funds because the church has seized legal control of their bank accounts. “Our sales of sweets have greatly declined due to the defamation of the church against us,” Belén says. “In street markets people insult us.”
The mother superior said that they have €383 left, “the entirety of our funds for 13 sisters and animals and convents … they are trying to make us desist from the decision we’ve taken”. To survive and pay their debts after economic “strangulation” at the hands of the archbishop, the nuns announced this week that they will produce a new brand of extra fine chocolates called “RqueR”, which stands for a Spanish expression, erre que erre, meaning keeping going on in adversity, which will be introduced in two weeks, in time for Christmas.
The isolation is evident in Belorado. A silver-haired man walking his dog near the convent’s walls says: “They must leave. They are squatters. They have behaved badly with the village. Women here used to help them out and now they have cheated them by acting this way.”
At the 17th-century church Father Norbert, the parish priest, says: “It’s sad. They were part of us and we are surprised that they have taken this path.” He points to the church’s entrance where the archbishop’s long statement against the nuns is pinned to a board. It announces their excommunication and warns against attending the nuns’ “liturgical acts”.
Sister Belén says the nuns have “suffered persecution and calumny”
ISAMBARD WILKINSON
What will the future bring? The nuns have fallen out with de Rojas over “a difference of practices”. A new sedevacantist “bishop”, Rodrigo Henrique Ribeiro Da Silva, a Brazilian, now resides with them. “We have only known him for a little while and trust is built over time,” Isabel says.
At mass in the convent, three of the elder nuns are visible, slumped in wheelchairs. The parents of one of the younger nuns, Sister Sion, say that they have come from Madrid to support their daughter. “We have brought food,” her mother says. “It’s a hard situation. We are praying that God finds a way.” Isabel’s 96-year-old father, a retired engineer, recently visited to encourage her in her fight.
What will happen if they lose their legal battle? “We have great faith in our lawyers, one of whom is my brother,” Isabel says. “We think we can win, even if we do lose one convent. If we lose them all, no matter, we will embrace the mercy of God and providence.”