Three octogenarian nuns have defied their diocese, run away from their nursing home and returned to their former convent in Salzburg, Austria, which they’re now occupying.
On September 4, Sister Regina, 86, Sister Rita, 81, and Sister Bernadette, 88, returned to Schloss Goldenstein, the Alpine convent and women’ faculty the place that they had spent most of their lives — a lot to the displeasure of the native church.
On arrival, the nuns discovered that their former residence not had electrical energy or operating water, so their supporters introduced them water and emergency mills, NCS affiliate ORF reported.
The sisters’ former college students have been serving to and organizing a each day routine for them, whereas a household physician is out there to supply medical care, ORF added.
Since returning to the convent, the nuns have grow to be energetic on Instagram, amassing greater than 10,000 followers in little over per week. On their account, they doc their each day routine of praying, consuming and attending mass collectively in addition to their now-frequent interviews with journalists from all around the globe.
They additionally present themselves slowly navigating the monastery’s stairs, within the absence of a stairlift, which they are saying was eliminated, and cleansing up the semi-derelict constructing. In one video, 88-year-old Sister Bernadette might be seen plunging a blocked sink.
The long-running dispute between the nuns and their superior, Provost Markus Grasl, dates back to the top of 2023 when the nuns say they have been faraway from the monastery towards their will.
But it escalated final month when the nuns made a number of allegations towards him and the Archdiocese of Salzburg within the Austrian press.
When the sisters left their nursing home, Grasl issued a press release saying the scenario was “completely incomprehensible” to him, including that the ladies had been concerned in “intensive discussions” about their future.
“The rooms in the monastery are no longer usable and in no way meet the requirements for orderly care,” he mentioned. “It is clear than an independent life in the Goldenstein Monastery is no longer possible, particularly due to the precarious health situation of the sisters.”
On September 6, he launched one other assertion, saying he feared the nuns “are overestimating themselves and that a medical emergency may occur.”
When contacted for remark, Reichersberg Abbey, which has been chargeable for the monastery since 2022, directed NCS to Grasl’s statements.
ORF reported that when Reichersberg Abbey assumed accountability for Schloss Goldenstein, it mentioned it might enable the nuns to stay their for the length of their retirement so long as their well being allowed.
The nuns’ long-term future on the monastery continues to be unsure, although they now have electrical energy and sizzling water in their rooms, ORF mentioned. They stay firmly against returning to the nursing home. “Before I die in that old people’s home, I would rather go to a meadow and enter eternity that way,” Sister Bernadette told the BBC.
However, a spokesperson for Reichersberg Abbey informed ORF that returning to the nursing home is “unavoidable.”